This article introduces the use of public exam questions in fishbowl debate to engage highly exam-oriented secondary students with communicative language teaching (CLT). The practice aims to address the issue that many teachers of English as a second language (ESL)/English as a foreign language (EFL) in Asian contexts either teach to the test or implement CLT without catering for the students' pragmatic needs to pass external assessment. A series of activities was implemented in a secondary school in Hong Kong to promote positive washback from the public exam. The author's experience and reflections informed by ongoing dialogue with the stakeholders in the school and data collected from student focus group interviews suggest that the fishbowl debate encouraged students to use English for authentic and meaningful purposes, while appreciating its relevance to the writing exam. An important pedagogical implication is for teachers to balance CLT and exam preparation and help students to reach both their mastery and performance goals. Copyright © 2020 The Author(s).

This paper reports on a multimodal teaching approach delivered to grade 5 elementary students in a bilingual school in Hong Kong, as part of a larger research study aimed at supporting English Language Learners (ELLs) in science class. As language demands of reading, writing and talking science place additional challenges on ELLs, there is much research interest in exploring the use of multiple modes of communication beyond the dominant use of verbal and written language. Research has shown that students develop a better scientific understanding of natural phenomena by using and alternating between a variety of representations. Yet, questions remain as to what meanings ELLs make during a multimodal discourse and, in turn, how such discourse provides support to ELLs in learning science. Drawing on social semiotics, which theorizes language as a meaning making resource comprising a range of modes (e.g. gestures and diagrams), we used a case-study approach to examine how a multimodal instructional approach provided 10 students with multiple avenues to make sense of science learning. Video recordings (capturing gestures, speech and model manipulation) and student works (drawing and writing) were collected during nine inquiry science lessons, which encompassed biology, physics and chemistry science units. Multimodal transcription allowed discourse to be analysed at a fine-grain level which, together with analysis of student works, indicated that the multimodal instructional approach provided the necessary inquiry opportunities and variety of language experiences for ELLs to build science understandings. Analysis also revealed how the affordances of modes attributed to the meaning making potentials for the ELLs and how they provided alternate communication avenues in which new meanings could be made. The findings from this study have implications for ELLs learning science within the growing multilingual Asia-Pacific region.
[Copyright of Asia-Pacific Science Education

This article is principally designed to examine social workers' retrospective views on their past educational experiences with case management in disability services to supply a deficiency that very little literature attention has been paid to how prior professional education shape their case management practice. Using qualitative methods, 13 social workers selected by purposive sampling were invited to participate in in-depth interviews. The qualitative data were analysed to generate some themes. Three themes found are "from 'rarely heard of it' to 'remember it being referred to'"; "buy a lottery ticket before starting a field placement"; and "Ambiguity". These themes indicate that social work education related to case management was lagging behind, which may exacerbate social work's polarisation and lead to social workers' confusion about their professionality. As a result, an urgent need for greater knowledge of case management in university education and in-service training should be addressed in Hong Kong.
[Copyright of China Journal of Social Work is the property of Routledge.]

The role of the first language (L1) in second language (L2) learning has been widely discussed and researched in the second Language Acquisition (SLA) literature. Benefits of L1 use have been found for vocabulary acquisition, and in facilitating comprehension thereby alleviating student anxiety. Many teachers appear to consider L1 use as a necessary option in L2 pedagogy. Disadvantages of L1 use are argued to be that it reduces exposure to the L2 thereby not enabling more implicit forms of L2 acquisition. Considerably less research has been carried out in English medium instruction (EMI) classrooms, surprisingly, as these are predicated on the benefits of massive exposure to the L2. This study investigated the effect of L1 and L2 use on teacher question types and interaction patterns in science lessons in early EMI and late EMI schools in Hong Kong. Our findings show that in late EMI, where there was much greater use of the L1, teachers tended to use higher order questions and were more interactive. In early EMI, despite students having received four more years of greater exposure to English instruction than late EMI students through the use of English as the vehicular language, teachers asked lower order questions and the interaction was more monologic. The implications for policy and pedagogy are discussed.
[Copyright of International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism is the property of Routledge.]

FIBER (Flipped Issue-Based Enquiry Ride) is a teacher-facilitated interactive pedagogic framework that the authors propose to integrate flipped learning into social humanities education. This paper reports a quasi-experimental study (with mixed methods) which examined the pedagogic effectiveness of FIBER in the authentic setting of formal curriculum learning and teaching. The study involved totally 611 Secondary-4 students from academically top, middle and bottom schools in Hong Kong. In comparison with the conventional issue-based enquiry learning approach, FIBER had different intensity of positive effects on the high, moderate, and low academic-achieving student participants. This paper provides researchers and educational practitioners with empirical evidence for supporting wider adoption of FIBER in social humanities education, as well as harnessing flipped learning in formal schooling. Apart from discussing the benefits, the authors also underline the challenges of FIBER and suggest future work.
[Copyright of Interactive Learning Environments is the property of Routledge.]

Content-based education programmes, in which a second/foreign language (L2) is used as the medium of instruction when teaching non-language content subjects, aim at both content and L2 learning. With such dual goal in mind, and with the rapid expansion of the programmes to contexts where students might have only basic L2 proficiency, there have been consistent calls for reconsidering the roles of first language (L1) in the teaching and learning process. The functions of L1 in content-based classrooms have been well documented, but it is necessary to have a more systematic approach to planning and using L1. This paper seeks to address this gap by applying the notions of 'curriculum genres' and 'task structure' when analysing patterns of teachers' use of L1 and L2 in a collection of content subject lessons observed in English-medium secondary schools in Hong Kong. With illustrative episodes presented in this paper, we would argue that 'curriculum genres' and 'task structure' can serve as useful tools for both researchers and teachers to analyse and critically reflect on patterns of pedagogic practices and language use in content-based classrooms. These will have significant implications for future research on using L1 and illuminate effective pedagogy in content-based education.
[Copyright of International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism is the property of Routledge.]

This study investigated Hong Kong secondary students' Classical Chinese (CC) reading comprehension, reading motivation, and the effects of different types of motivation on CC reading. Four hundred forty-eight seniors from four secondary schools in Hong Kong voluntarily completed a CC reading comprehension test and a reading motivation questionnaire. Findings indicated that students' CC reading performance was unsatisfactory. They had poor self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation in CC reading and read CC texts mainly for extrinsic reasons. While high-achievers had better CC reading comprehension performance and higher extrinsic motivation than low-achievers, they had lower intrinsic motivation. Unlike many previous studies in which intrinsic motivation has been found to be the most optimal type of reading motivation, structural equation modeling indicated that only self-efficacy and extrinsic motivation were significant predictors of students' CC reading comprehension performance after controlling for achievement level. The relation between CC reading and different types of motivation is discussed in light of the special nature of CC and the learning context of Hong Kong.
[Copyright of Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal is the property of Springer Netherlands.]

歷史教科書的結構可以分為課文系統和課文輔助系統兩部分。課文系統是教科書的主體內容,課文輔助系統則起到工具性的作用,兩者都是教科書必不可少的組成部分。目前,學術界在教科書比較研究方面,關於內地和香港中國歷史教科書課文系統的研究成果較多,因而本文從課文輔助系統角度,對兩地初中中國歷史教科書進行比較分析。本文以香港雅集版和內地部編版初中中國歷史教科書為例,將兩版教科書進行分析和比較,以此深化對課文輔助系統的認知與理解。除緒論和結語外,文章總共分為四章內容:第一章內容為兩版初中中國歷史教科書導學系統的比較。本文從編輯說明、目錄和課前提要等方面,比較兩版教科書導學系統的異同點。總體而言,雅集版導學系統生動有趣,部編版則簡明扼要。第二章內容是兩版初中中國歷史教科書闡釋系統的比較。對兩版教科書闡釋系統進行比較,主要選取了文獻資料、注釋和圖表資料等欄目。通過比較發現,雅集版的闡釋系統形式多樣,部編版則傾向於典型性和針對性。第三章主要是兩版初中中國歷史教科書鞏固拓展系統的比較。通過課內思考題、課後習題和拓展活動的分析,探討兩版教科書鞏固拓展系統的特點。雅集版鞏固拓展系統注重探究能力的培養,部編版側重基礎知識的掌握。第四章是對內地初中中國歷史教科書課文輔助系統教學和編寫的啟示。在比較分析的基礎上,學習香港雅集版課文輔助系統的優點,使歷史教師課堂教學更加完善,也希望對歷史教科書課文輔助系統的編寫有所啟發。

在當今經濟全球化背景之下,培養學生的文化意識和跨文化交際能力不僅僅是高中英語課程標準的要求,更是時代發展的要求。語言和文化密不可分,因此英語教學中不可將兩者分割。教材在英語教學中起著至關重要的作用,它不僅是學生主要的學習資料,也是教師主要的教學工具。教材所承載的文化內容及其編排、呈現形式影響著學生文化知識學習的效果和文化意識的培養。香港地區作為國際金融中心,其英語教育程度略高於內地,其教材的編寫對於我國內地教材的編寫有一定參考價值。本研究選取內地人教版New Senior English for China(NSEFC)和香港朗文版Longman Activate New Senior Secondary(LANSS)兩套高中英語教材作為比較的對象,以跨文化交際理論和文化圖式理論為理論基礎,運用文獻法、比較分析法、文本分析法,系統地比較了兩地高中英語教材中的文化內容。本研究主要包括以下內容:(1)從宏觀層面來比較兩地教材中文化內容的整體編排及呈現方式。(2)從微觀層面來比較兩地教材文化內容在地域來源、文化類型及文化時代性等方面的異同。研究發現:(1)整體編排及呈現方式方面,人教版缺乏整體聯繫性,且真實語料不足,呈現方式相對單一。朗文版具有一定的整體聯繫性,大部分文章取自真實語料,課文呈現方式豐富多變。(2)地域來源方面,人教版涉及世界諸多國家,但目的語文化內容佔比較大,本土文化內容不足,不利於培養學生平等的文化意識。朗文版文化內容以香港本土文化和目的語為主,缺乏其他國家地區的文化內容。(3)文化類型方面,兩地教材都存在涵蓋方面不夠全面的問題,缺乏對觀念文化更為深層次的解釋,僅僅停留在表面上的認知和鑒賞。(4)文化的時代性方面,人教版與朗文版相比缺乏當代文化內容,不利於學生文化知識結構的更新。最後,根據以上研究結論,筆者對教材編寫者和教師提出了相關建議,冀望能為高中英語教材文化內容的選擇和編排提供參考。

2017年11月,教育部在正式發佈的最新普通高中課程方案和課程標準中指出:生物課程要以發展“學科素養”為核心,以“教學過程重實踐”為基本理念。生物學實驗作為培養學生生物科學素養的重要途徑,其實驗教學內容的選擇和設計也應隨之進行相應的改變。香港與大陸同宗同源,歷時近20年教育改革,無論是初等教育還是高等教育改革都取得世界矚目的成績,高中生物教材也有可圈可點之處,尤其是實驗內容的選擇與設計特點較為突出。因此,筆者對香港與大陸現行生物教材的實驗內容進行比較分析,為大陸生物教材實驗教學內容部分的編寫和高中生物實驗教學實踐提供啟示與借鑒。第一部分,利用文獻法、比較法等研究方法從課程理念、課程模式、課程重點、課程評價四個方面比較兩地課程標準(香港稱為:課程指引)關於實驗教學及實驗編寫的不同。第二部分,將香港雅集出版社出版的《概念與應用》教材與人民教育出版社出版的《分子與細胞》、《遺傳與進化》中相同的知識模塊包含的所有實驗分析整理並進行對比研究。從實驗內容、實驗數量、實驗類型、實驗材料、實驗安全、實驗插圖、實驗過程等七個方面進行詳細的對比剖析。第三部分,在以上對比研究的基礎上,結合大陸地區的特點,對大陸生物教材實驗部分的編寫及高中生物實驗教學實踐提出建議與對策。在教材編寫上,提出加強實驗安全教育;實驗選材人性化,關注道德倫理;增加插圖數量,提高插圖質量;簡化實驗過程,增加實驗的開放性;堅持評價指標的多元化,設計實驗報告冊;增加課外實踐活動;搭建教材互聯網平台,增加網絡生物試驗等七個建議。根據以上分析,對教材中“提取和分離葉綠體中的色素實驗”、“植物組織中的還原糖、脂肪、蛋白質的檢測實驗”兩個最為典型的實驗進行了優化設計。在實驗教學方面,提出靈活使用教材中的實驗方案;減少實驗課堂的講解時間,重視實驗教學安全等三個建議。希望本研究能對為高中生物教材編寫及生物教師的實驗教學提供必要的理論依據與啟示。