Despite the fact that PMI is not the government policy, an increasing number of schools in Hong Kong have adopted different modes of using PMI in teaching Chinese Language since 1997. Such a trend has caused general concern because Putonghua (the standardized spoken form of Modern Chinese) is not the mother tongue of most teachers or students in the local community. The switch of medium in teaching the language subject may have profound impact on the cognitive development of students because most teachers and students will need to acquire another system of speech sounds and lexicon in handling the subject matter. Nevertheless, as the PMI trend prevails, language teachers are under "pressure" to adjust their teaching medium so as to meet the changing social expectation of equipping students with the standardized form of a world language. This paper reports the findings of a recent study of teachers' views of teaching Chinese through PMI in Hong Kong. Among the group of 20 serving teachers in a postgraduate course, some are proficient in Putonghua and some are not. Through a series of seminar presentation and discussion, these front line teachers revealed the current practices in different school contexts. Insights of these participants represent an "insider's" view of the issue and should inform the development of effective ways of reforming the teaching medium of Chinese in a complex social context.

This presentation will focus on how teacher feedback helps cultivate critical thinking skills and raises awareness in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course. Analysis is based on data taken from verbal/written exchanges between teacher-student and student-teacher. Samples from students' work and teachers' comments will highlight the effectiveness of the process approach in developing L2 learners' writing skills. Practical issues such as ways of organising individual and group feedback sessions will be addressed. It also argues that dialogic encounters should be gradually scaffolded in order to maximise learning outcomes.

Within the core curriculum of primary education, the standard of both Chinese and English, especially writing ability, has attracted much attention of educators, parents and the public. Experienced educationists involved in Chinese language teaching and assessment have an opinion that young people's abilities in reading and writing have dropped in recent years. It might be a consequence came along with compulsory education as there is a great increase of individual differences among pupils that makes teaching and learning very difficult. There is an urgent need to find ways to make up the gap and guarantee at least a minimum educational attainment of all pupils. As art is a core subject in primary schools in Hong Kong, this study aims to examine the effect of art appreciation in art lessons on Chinese writing ability in some primary 3 pupils in a Chinese community.