This paper investigates mainland Chinese students? experiences of learning English as a second language (L2) in a multilingual university in Hong Kong, with particular attention to their negotiation of participation and identity. Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews with a group of mainland Chinese students, the study revealed that their participation in L2 practices appeared to be shaped by the contextual conditions in different communities within the university and mediated by their agentic responses to the contextual realities of these communities. While they gained fuller participation in L2-mediated activities in the local student community and the classroom community as a result of their appropriation of the associated language practices and their display of knowledge and competence in the related social practices, they struggled to gain access to L2 interactional opportunities in the community of exchange students, where their negotiation of positionalities was subject to the perceived unequal power relations between native and non-native speakers of the English. It is argued that their participation in L2-mediated activities in the university could be understood as a complex, dynamic, situated and co-constructed process of negotiating access, competence, membership, positionality, identities and discursive practices associated with different communities.
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This study offers an in-depth understanding of acculturative experiences among a group of Pakistani secondary school students in Hong Kong. The study findings seek to report the various ways in which the research participants experience acculturation in the familial, communal, educational, and societal contexts and identify the various factors that facilitate or hinder their acculturation to mainstream society. The study employed a culture learning approach and adopted a strength-based perspective to understand the lived acculturative experiences of first-generation and second-generation Pakistani students (n-16) attending six different secondary schools in Hong Kong. Phenomenography as research methodology guided the study, and data was collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews. The phenomenographic data analysis aided by Nvivo software resulted in twenty-eight categories representing the different ways in which the research participants experience acculturation. The three findings chapters delineate what and how the participants learn about their heritage culture (enculturation) as well as other cultures (acculturation) and what factors hinder their acculturation to the mainstream society. While growing up in the multicultural city of Hong Kong, the research participants not only learn about their social identities and acquire multiple languages but also learn about their heritage culture and other cultures. Although all the participants make sense of their social identities differently, their place of birth, ethnicity, nationality, and religious affiliation shape their hyphenated identities. The acquisition of linguistic capital in multiple languages, including mother tongue, Urdu, English, Cantonese, and Arabic, facilitate their learning about heritage culture and other cultures. Their everyday socialization across the social settings results in both their enculturation as well as acculturation.Within the familial context, language preferences, dietary

Globalisation has facilitated massive flows of immigrant students of diverse backgrounds into schools. These developments intensify concerns about immigrant youth's mobility and belongingness, and about the capacity of schools to integrate them into receiving societies. However, the diverse forms, experiences and effects of young schoolchildren's educational mobilities on belongingness are under-researched. This study addresses this gap by examining the links between mobility, belongingness and schooling experiences of 417 Chinese cross-border students (CBS). These students are permanent residents of Hong Kong but live on the mainland and travel across the border to school every day. A structural equation model shows that some dimensions of schooling experiences, notably better relations with local peers and more extracurricular school-based activities in Hong Kong, have stronger links to CBS's belongingness than students' personal and family characteristics and their hours on cross-border commuting. The implications of the findings, both at theoretical level and for enhancing young mobile child migrants' belongingness, are discussed. Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Existing research on the psychological and academic experiences of China-born students studying outside of China has mainly been conducted in Western English-speaking countries. Using a coping resources framework, we investigated the predictors of psychological and academic adaptation of 2,201 mainland Chinese students (74% female) studying in universities in Hong Kong, China’s Special Administrative Region and a former British colony. We found that academic self-efficacy, social support, and low levels of perceived discrimination predicted both psychological and academic adaptation. Language competence in English and the local dialect Cantonese was found to be additional factors in mainland Chinese students’ academic adaptation. Implications for future research and higher education policies and practices are discussed. Copyright © 2019 Society for Research into Higher Education.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the key factors affecting Mainland Chinese students pursuing a Master of Education degree in Hong Kong on their study abroad decision and return intentions. Design/methodology/approach: The current study employed a mixed-methods approach to investigate factors that affect Mainland Chinese students pursuing MEd degrees in Hong Kong. Participants were first invited to fill out a questionnaire. After collecting and analyzing the survey data, in-depth interviews with a selected group of students were carried out by the research team to obtain useful qualitative data to triangulate the survey findings. A purposeful and convenience sampling method, carried out through the personal network of the research team, was used to recruit MEd Mainland Chinese students in Hong Kong to participate in the current study. Findings: The findings provided compelling evidence that Hong Kong was an attractive study destination to this particular group of MEd Chinese students. The findings also indicated that academic factors were more important than social, cultural and economic factors when it came to choosing their study destination. In contrast to previous studies, participants expressed a much stronger desire to return home upon graduation. The three most influential predictors of their decision to return were the lack of a Hong Kong teaching certificate (r=+0.36), the opportunity to contribute to their hometown (r=+0.31) and the inclination to be closer to family and friends (r=+0.20). Originality/value: While a number of studies have been carried out to study why Mainland Chinese students chose Hong Kong as their study destination to pursue their teacher training degree, none of these studies focused exclusively on fee-paying MEd Chinese students. Hong Kong is facing keen competition from both traditional host countries and emerging host countries to recruit students from Mainland China. It is therefore crucial to understand the needs of

香港少數族裔人口近年不斷上升，入讀本地學校的人數亦相應遞升。就回應本港學前機構對支援少數族裔幼兒學習的需求，本講座會討論學前機構遇到的問題，並就此提出改善策略，希望能透過教師培訓、政府支援和民間團體組織協助，為少數族裔學童提供多元學習機會，推廣共融學習文化。The population of ethnic minorities in Hong Kong has been increasing in recent years, and correspondingly the number of ethnic minority students enrolled in local schools has been rising. To address the needs of preschools in Hong Kong to support the learning of ethnic minority children, this seminar examines the problems that preschools are facing on this issue and proposes strategies for improvement. Hopefully, through strategic management, teacher training, government support and collaboration with civil organizations, more learning opportunities can be provided to ethnic minority children and an integrated learning culture can be promoted. Copyright © 2018 Learning & Teaching Expo.

Present literature concerning ethnic students in Hong Kong has been largely focusing on ethnic students' struggle in identity formation, emotional and behavioral needs, acquisition of Chinese language, disparity of social rights and opportunities as well as academic and career mobility, etc. While perspectives of ethnic students' learning under mainstream teaching in Chinese schools have attracted much attention, voices of frontline educators' learning from everyday teaching ethnic students are not widely addressed. Rather perceiving teacher as a traditional authority figure in a mono-cultural Chinese classroom, this particular case-study argues growing number of frontline Chinese teachers have been undergoing experiential learning and ongoing reflection through daily teaching and interaction with ethnic Muslim students in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2018 Hong Kong Sociological Association 20th Annual Conference.

Students from Mainland China are the largest group of non-local students for Hong Kong universities in recent years. To attract more Mainland students and smoothen their application processes, the admission policies of Hong Kong universities are becoming increasingly more compatible for students from Mainland by recognizing various qualifications and standard examinations (e.g., Joint Entrance Exam For Universities in PRC, College English Test and Test for English Majors). However, the quick increasing amount of Mainland students in Hong Kong universities has brought various social issues concerning arguments about the medium of instructions, Hong Kong-mainland contradictions and so on. To understand how the various policy text, this essay reviews the admission policies of Hong Kong universities and related issues from three aspects: institution categories, programme levels, and place of origin. Furthermore, research questions such as what broader politics surround the policy issue, which institutions/actors are involved in the policy process and what the outcomes are answered by employing the political system theories. The social problems related to the admission policies will be examined and discussed, solutions for which will also be proposed. Copyright © 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Informed by research literature about intercultural competence development, this paper aims to explore non-local students’ skills and strategies in communication when they study at a university in Hong Kong. The previous research indicated that they usually experience many problems to adapt into host culture and country because they are lacking in language proficiency and social-cultural knowledge. Students’ prior learning experience, attitude, psychological or behavioural factors can affect their communication skills. In addition, different languages, dialects, accents, characters or cultural difference between their home and host cultures can also cause communication barriers to the students. This study shows that most of the non-local students, mainly the Chinese, still encounter language difficulties in communication in a Chinese society. Such difficulties are reported in studies on Gangpiaos (literally meaning Mainland Chinese drifters in Hong Kong) as well; the word “drifter” implies adaptation difficulties for Mainland Chinese immigrates. Nonetheless, existing empirical studies have been seldom tapped into non-local university students’ intercultural communication capability and how they cope with their communication difficulties in a Chinese society. The present study seeks to fill this research gap in the literature. Based on in-depth interviews with 30 non-local students who were studying in undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programmes, this paper adopted thematic analysis to examine the students’ language obstacles and identify the pattern of their communication practices in the process of intercultural adaptation in Hong Kong. Coping strategies in communication and implications for policies, which assist in young Gangpiaos in developing their intercultural communication knowledge and skills, are drawn based on the findings. Copyright © 2018 HKERA International Conference.

This paper explores the influence of friendship in mainland Chinese (MC) students’ adaptation to studying in Hong Kong. The number of MC students in Hong Kong has amounted to 18,887 in 2016, which makes it necessary for universities to cater for these students’ adaptation. Research has identified social-cultural differences between MC students and their local peers despite shared traditional Chinese cultural root. Existing studies have shown that international students can adapt to the new culture better and be more confident by making cross-cultural friends. Previous research has mainly focused on MC students’ difficulties in their adaptation, but how friendship influences their adaptation is still under-researched. This paper addresses the research questions: (1) What strategies do mainland students adopt to establish friendships during their study in Hong Kong? (2) What are the facilitating and hindering factors for mainland students to establish friendship? (3) How can friendship help mainland students adapt to their study and life in Hong Kong? A total of 24 MC university students studying in Hong Kong were interviewed. Thematic analysis was employed for data analysis. The findings show that friendship plays an important role in MC students’ adaptation to studying in Hong Kong, especially regarding daily life routines, such as how to deal with visa issues and navigate the university’s course selection system. MC students build friendships mainly through taking part in social and academic learning activities. Nonetheless, political-social conflicts between Hong Kong and Mainland China have, to a certain extent, hindered friendship establishment between MC and local students. Copyright © 2018 HKERA International Conference.