Involving parents in their children's school-based English language learning is beneficial to learners' academic achievement as well as their language and literacy development. However, involving parents can be challenging. This study reports on one teacher's use of a digital learning platform, Seesaw, with his third-grade (7 to 8 year-olds) English language writing class in Hong Kong to address the lack of parental involvement. The platform became a space for parents to be involved in their child's school-based writing. It enabled them to view, like and comment in response to their child and other children's English work. Although parents were seen to be involved on the platform, it was observed they mainly viewed and liked rather than commented. Future pedagogical directions will be discussed with suggestions provided on how parents can be encouraged to take a more active role on such platforms. Copyright ©Sage Publications Ltd.

In recent years, reflective writings have been increasingly incorporated into the higher education curriculum to enhance students' deep learning and to help assess their experiential learning outcomes. However, as reflective practices gain momentum worldwide, an under-researched question arises regarding whether teachers know how to assess reflection. Drawing on a teacher assessment literacy framework, this study explores how six novice university teachers in Hong Kong understand the assessment of reflective writings from three dimensions. Findings reveal that although teachers demonstrate a strong understanding of assessing reflection in a conceptual dimension (e.g. purposes and approaches of assessment), practically and socio-emotionally, teachers lack adequate knowledge and awareness to perform satisfactory assessment of reflection. The study subsequently discusses how and why certain dimensions of assessment literacy in reflection are prioritised in Hong Kong higher educationand provides a range of implications to improve future reflection practices and research. Copyright ©Routledge.

This article describes the steps we went through in designing and validating an item bank to diagnose linguistic problems in the English academic writing of university students in Hong Kong. Test items adopt traditional item formats (e.g., MCQ, grammatical judgment tasks, and error correction) but are based on authentic language materials extracted from a manually error-tagged corpus of target students' essays. A total of 257 items were developed to assess 25 high-frequency and grave linguistic errors. To validate test items and calibrate their psychometric qualities, four parallel tests were assembled and given to 338 students. Rasch modeling was conducted to examine item dimensionality, DIF sizes, fit indices, reliability, and difficulty. The results supported the validity and reliability of the remaining 219 items in the bank. Moreover, we investigated the effects of item formats and target errors on item difficulty and item-measure correlations and the relations amongst error difficulty error frequency and prevalence. The item bank approach to developing diagnostic tests was found useful insofar as it provided more precise information about knowledge gaps than the corpus-based textual analysis and had the potential to pinpoint high priority areas for remedial instruction. Copyright © Routledge.

This study investigates students' perceptions about their teachers' adoption of a new way to use feedback in writing classrooms in two elementary schools in Hong Kong. The innovation comprises three feedback stages (i.e., pre-feedback, during-feedback and post-feedback) over the course of a teaching-learning cycle to maximize the potential of feedback to the learning effectiveness of the students. Data included student questionnaires, interviews with students and teachers, lesson observations as well as documentary analysis of teaching material. Results indicate that the students considered feedback delivery in the three stages as beneficial to their interest, confidence, motivation and self-perceived performance in writing. The article highlights the need to offer feedback in all three feedback phases to maximize its effectiveness and to offer a more positive learning experience to students.
[Copyright of International Journal of Applied Linguistics is the property of John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.]

This study investigated the influences of the use of self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies on students' self-efficacy in English writing. A total of 155 fourth graders from 1 government-funded primary school in Hong Kong completed a questionnaire on SRL strategy use and a questionnaire on self-efficacy in English writing. The students used planning strategies more frequently than the other strategy types (e.g., text generating). They had a higher level of self-efficacy in content than in the other aspects (e.g., language and grammar). The students with more SRL strategy use reported a higher level of self-efficacy. The use of SRL strategies had significant and positive relationships with the students' self-efficacy. In particular, the use of planning and self-monitoring strategies had the strongest correlations with self-efficacy. This study opens a new window to understanding how students' self-efficacy in English writing develops as a result of their SRL strategy use. We discuss practical implications for English as a second language/English as a foreign language classroom instruction.
[Copyright of Reading & Writing Quarterly is the property of Taylor & Francis Inc.]

In the last two decades there has been a growing trend of adopting English medium instruction (EMI) in universities. EMI increases the need for teaching English for specific purposes, so as to help students develop discipline-specific English language skills. Summary writing skills in such a disciplinary context are considered to be essential as students need to comprehend, synthesise and integrate source materials into their own academic writings. This paper focuses on a project supporting students’ summary writing skills through ESP summary writing workshops and an online learning platform in a university in Hong Kong. Data were collected through students’ self-reflections and post-workshop interviews. Findings reveal that disciplinary-specific summary writing training raises students’ awareness of writing skills that can be adapted to writings in their own subject courses; students also perceived that the online learning platform offers the chance for them to self-evaluate their own summaries and regulate their own learning. The present study contributes to the understanding of strategies that can support university students’ discipline-specific summary writing skills in the EMI context. Copyright © 2018 Asia TEFL.

Based on a well-recognized formative assessment strategy model (Leahy et al, 2005) and multiple analytical frameworks of teacher feedback, the present study investigated three teachers (a novice, an experienced, and a veteran teacher) with regard to their instructional, assessment, and feedback practices throughout the pre-, during-, and poststages of a second language (L2) writing instruction cycle. Adopting a case study approach, multiple data were gathered from interviews, lesson observations, teaching materials, students’ writing, and teacher written feedback. Cross-case comparisons were conducted to understand teachers’ formative assessment strategies, feedback practices, and their difficulties. The study found that the teachers engaged primarily with the pre- and post-writing stages. In the pre-writing stage, they conducted a variety of activities to prepare students for writing and to clarify target writing criteria. However, they tended to skip the during-writing stage. In the post-writing stage, all teachers adopted comprehensive error correction with the novice teacher giving more corrections than the other two. Only the experienced teacher required students to compose a second draft, the other two requiring only a single draft. Unlike the veteran teacher, the two younger teachers avoided writing negative comments and wrote many personalized comments probably in order to build relationships with students. In terms of feedback orientation, teachers paid more attention to what a student did and could do better in the task at hand than what a student could do in future tasks. Implications drawn from this research were presented in the form of a checklist for teachers, which integrated instructional and formative assessment strategies with the L2 writing instruction processes. Copyright © 2019 English Language Education Publishing.

This presentation focuses on an innovative approach to writing instruction, exemplar-based writing instruction and is divided into two parts: (1) a systematic review of recent literature on the use of exemplar in higher education contexts using a text-mining software called Leximancer and (2) an introduction of an ongoing teaching development grant project being conducted in a Hong Kong university which aims to develop an exemplar-based textbook and online platform to be used by university English instructors to teach IELTS writing. In the first session, the speakers will present a systematic review of current literature on exemplar use in univesity writing classrooms to highlight its affordances and limitations. Different from traditional systematic review which is criticized as lack of ‘methodological rigor’ (Major & Savin-Baden, 2011, p. 647) and ‘subjectivity in data analysis and the interpretation of findings’ (Thomas, 2014, p. 236), this review of literature is done using a text-mining software named Leximancer. Leximancer was selected as the tool because it has been used in educational research (e.g. distance education, physical education, general education) (Hyndman & Pill, 2017; Zawacki-Richter & Naidu, 2016). Additionally, Leximancer is chosen over other similar tools (e.g. Rapidminer) because of its user-friendliness. Leximancer can automatically generate a list of most frequently-appeared word-level concepts that appear in the selected documents and a concept map which shows the relationship between those concepts after completing a few simple steps. In the second session, an ongoing grant project will be introduced which focuses on the development of curriculum materials for university English instructors to implement exemplarbased instruction in their academic writing classrooms. Focusing on IELTS writing, sample materials developed by the presenters will be shared. Copyright © 2018 ICBLT.

In this paper, we shall explore academic writing in the framework of academic literacy development among Hong Kong university ESL learners of language and education programs. We shall also discuss discipline-specific academic writing in terms of the continuum comprising academic writing in science, social science and humanities and the implications for developing academic writing skills of Hong Kong ESL learners. In particular, we shall discuss in detail a number of issues regarding academic writing in the disciplines of language and education.
[The International Journal of the Humanities Copyright © Common Ground, Zhichang Xu, Lixun Wang, Pui Man Jennie Wong, Matthew DeCoursey, All Rights Reserved. The journal web site is located at http://ijh.cgpublisher.com/]