This research is motivated by the scarcity of investigation into L2 learners' online processing problems in listening comprehension, in particular those relating to L2 proficiency. It aims to identify the online processing problems encountered by Hong Kong students of differing L2 proficiency and whether these problems can be overcome by compensatory schema use. Two questions are addressed: 1) Given the same listening situation, do high and low proficiency students experience the same online processing problems? 2) Does success in compensatory schema use vary according to L2 proficiency? Four data collection methods (semi-structured interviews, questionnaire survey, partial transcription, and introspection) and both quantitative and qualitative data analyses are employed. Exploratory semi-structured interviews indicate that apart from the problems of unfamiliar topics, vocabulary and accents, students report experiencing what might be called an "acoustic blur" during L2 listening. They hear streams of English speech sounds but cannot identify the key words. Even when they think they have identified the words, these words often do not fit the context. The questionnaire survey was designed using the data gathered from the semi-structured interviews. The survey results show that practice frequency has a significant effect on students' perception of overall listening difficulty; the more often the practice, the less often listening problems are perceived. Slightly more than one third of respondents have almost no listening practice in English outside class. L2 proficiency impacts significantly on students' perceptions of processing problems such as those caused by unfamiliar topics and vocabulary, and failure in sound segmentation and word recognition. In their self-assessment of word recognition, low proficiency students' word recognition in an average lecture and TV program is less than 50% and 40% respectively, whereas that of proficient students is 80% and 65%. These

The notion that testing exerts influence on teaching and learning is accepted by many. In Hong Kong, some educationalists indeed see tests and examinations as one way of instilling positive changes in learners' learning. In 1993, amidst growing concern that Hong Kong students' standard of English was declining, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) proposed to the then University and Polytechnic Grants Committee that a Graduating Students' Language Proficiency Assessment (GSLPA)be devised and introduced to encourage university students to improve their English proficiency. In 1999, the GSLPA-English was mandated by the PolyU as a university exit English test for its graduates. There was no accompanying formal teaching/learning curriculum, as the test was intended to assess students' level of English proficiency rather than their achievement in some taught English courses. Whilst it was reasonable to expect that some students in this university would engage in some form of learning activities to help them learn/train for their exit English test, it was not clear exactly how these students - of their own accord, without a specified learning syllabus and receiving no input from teachers in the regular English classroom - would approach test preparation. Hitherto, there has been little research on how washback operates for learners rather than teachers. This study was principally motivated by a desire to better understand learners as participants in the washback cycle. It investigated how a sample of PolyU graduating students perceived the GSLPA-English as a university exit English test, and whether and how they prepared for it. Initially, the study found that this test was perceived by many respondents as lacking in status and stakes, and that not many took steps to prepare for it. The GSLPA-English was superseded by the lELTS-CEPAS in 2002, when the University Grants Committee, in a further attempt to raise students' awareness of the importance of English proficiency

In Hong Kong, extensive reading education among junior secondary students has always been overlooked. The significance of extensive reading had always been emphasized at different stages of Chinese Language Curriculum development. The revised Chinese Language Curriculum for secondary schools issued in 2001 further stipulates that the impact of extensive reading on Chinese Language acquisition with detailed elaborations on the setting of reading environment, the design of reading activities, and the criteria of selecting books for extensive reading. Despite the emphasis and effort put on extensive reading, the ranking of local junior secondary school students at the reading assessment of PISA has disappointingly descended from the 6th in 2001 to the 10th in 2003. To reverse the trend and enhance students' reading ability, not only should emphasis be placed on the teaching and learning of reading in the curriculum, but extensive reading must also be promoted to consolidate knowledge students learn so that junior secondary students can develop good attitude of extensive reading. Urgent as it is and to accomplish this task, teachers must further understand the way in which junior secondary students develop their attitude of extensive reading in order to better solve the difficulties encountered in the implementation of an extensive reading curriculum in Hong Kong.
This research is based on the theories and thoughts on extensive reading in western countries and pioneers in adopting 'engaged reading' concept in designing a school-based junior secondary extensive reading curriculum. A 3-year longitudinal action research on Form one students of an English medium secondary school aims at exploring the difficulties and effectiveness of implementing an extensive reading curriculum, the causes of difficulties that may be involved and the reasons why junior secondary students find it difficult in developing good attitude of extensive reading.
The research findings have

Teaching is divided on emphasis on teachers' creativity or students' creativity, on novelty or on appropriateness or usefulness. The emphasis shifts from teachers' creativity to students' creativity after training and their views on creative teaching were more comprehensive. Five categories of conceptions of creative teaching were revealed: daily creative teaching, creative adaptive teaching, creative innovative teaching, teaching for creativity and creative interactive teaching.
Data on student teachers' teaching performance indicated that most of the student teachers possess the attributes and attitudes necessary for implementing creative teaching. However, such creative teaching was obstructed by the influence of traditional methods of Chinese language teaching, textbooks and the school environment. Most of the student teachers could only exhibit "playfulness", a characteristic of creative teaching, in their teaching. Their performance improved in the second semester and more characteristics of creative teaching were found, especially on students' creativity.
Analysis of the overall performance of the best three student teachers found that all manifested a more comprehensive view of creative teaching. They were able to balance different aspects and different elements of creative teaching. Last but not least, they demonstrated "teaching flexibility" which enabled them to adapt or integrate existing teaching methods flexibly and thus to enhance creativity in both teacher and student.
The contribution of this study lies partly in the overview that it provides on creative teaching. It clarifies key concepts of creative teaching and shows directions for future development. In terms of implementation, the research identifies critical features of creative teaching and key elements that affect learning outcomes. It provides teachers with concrete principles to implement creative teaching. The result of the study have implications for the design of initial teacher

This study investigates mathematics teaching in Hong Kong and Shanghai by considering the ways of handling Pythagoras' Theorem at eighth grade from the perspective of variation. It has three aims. Firstly, it attempts to identify the characteristics of the ways of handling the same topic in the two cities. Secondly, it tries to identify patterns of handling the topic in Hong Kong and Shanghai through making a comparison between different ways of handling the same topic. Thirdly, it seeks to interpret the findings from a cultural perspective and contribute to solving the paradox of Chinese mathematics teaching.
The Hong Kong data includes the following: eight videotaped lessons with the same topic of Pythagoras' Theorem and supplementary documents such as teachers' questionnaires, samples of text pages, worksheets, and other materials used in the lessons. All of the Hong Kong data were taken from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study Repeat Video Study. The Shanghai data consists of eleven videotaped lessons from different schools in which Pythagoras' Theorem was taught, with supplementary documents, matching those used in Hong Kong. Mainly based on the videotaped lessons and supplementary documents, the inter-and intra-city comparisons were made from the perspective of variation in order to identify the characteristics of the different ways of handling the same topic.
The following similarities have been observed: (1) the focuses and structures of the lessons are quite similar; (2) The teachers tend to emphasize exploration of the theorem; (3) the teachers seein to emphasize exercises with variation; and (4) the teachers control the classrooin activities but they still encourage students to engage well in the process of learning. However, some differences have also been identified. Firstly, the approaches to encouraging discovery of the theorem vary in that, the Hong Kong teachers prefer to employ physical manipulation while their Shanghai counterparts

The English verb BE, with its complicated forms and multiple functions, has posed great learning difficulties for learners of English both as the first and a second language. Most previous studies on the acquisition of BE have only examined a small number of participants and used data from experimental tasks, which have failed to provide a full picture of how BE is acquired and used by learners. By adopting a corpus-based approach, this study presents a fuller picture of the forms and functions of BE in the interlanguage grammars of Chinese learners of English.
Two learner corpora were used in this research, namely, Hong Kong Baptist University Interlanguage Corpus (HKBUILC) and Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC), consisting of English essays written by students from Hong Kong and Mainland China, respectively. Three subcorpora of CLEC (i.e. ST2, ST3, ST4) were adopted, representing Chinese learners at three different English proficiency levels. To obtain a comprehensive distribution of interlanguage BE, all the tokens of BE, including non-target-like, overgenerated BE, as in " Mary was lost the necklace she borrowed from her friend ", and omission of BE, as in "My mother would O angry with me", were annotated with respect to their syntactic and semantic properties. The data were then retrieved type by type for examination by using WordSmith, a concordancing software.
To account for the variable use of BE in learners' interlanguage grammars, this study further investigated a few factors that may influence the production and omission of BE, such as the following linguistic distinctions: (1) copular vs. auxiliary BE; (2) finite (am, is, are, was, were) vs. nonfinite (be, being, been) BE; (3) stage-level vs. individual-level predicate types (Carlson, 1977); (4) different post-BE constituents · · e.g. ergative vs. unergative verbs (Perlmutter, 1978); and (5) the differences between L1 and L2 (i.e. English BE vs. Mandarin Shi/Cantonese Haih).
The concordancing

Collaboration in design has become a geographically distributed and culturally dispersed activity. Increasingly, design educators see the need to prepare young designers for an international market by providing students with skills not only for design but also for intercultural communication.
This thesis investigates how design patterns for facilitating intercultural design education contexts can be identified through qualitative and comparative analysis of a long-term ethnographic study of cross-cultural computer-supported collaborative design learning. The core findings of this research are based on a three-year ethnographic study of intercultural computer-supported collaboration between groups of students from Hong Kong, Korea, Austria and Taiwan. A qualitative research approach was utilized for the discovery of regularities in the observed collaborations, and a comparative research approach was employed to discover similarities and differences across cultural contexts. Data from the first year was analyzed inductively to identify reoccurring themes in design collaboration. This guided the observation of collocated activity and analysis of online conversations in the second year of this study. A map of recurring design solutions was constructed from this analysis. Eleven design patterns were written based on this analysis and presented to designers for evaluation in a pattern workshop. Based on the feedback from this workshop, in the third year of this study an in-depth analysis of computer-mediated interaction between Hong Kong and Korean students, and their local tutors, was carried out. A deductive coding scheme, informed by theories of intercultural and cross-cultural communication research, was employed to guide the analysis and articulation of design patterns for intercultural collaboration.
Within this research, an inductive and deductive methodology for identifying and articulating design patterns was developed. Therein, eleven patterns for intercultural

Nowadays, Hong Kong students face considerable challenges to their health. Young people are potential civic leaders and parents of tomorrow. They should acquire understanding and moral appreciation of health concepts. A student's health is influenced by interaction with family, peers and the media among others. In this study, the school and the family considered as they are the two major sources of health education support for students.
Findings in this and other local research show that the fragmented school curriculum leads to a lack of comprehensive school health education programs. Health education in Hong Kong is not a separate subject. Health elements are acknowledged in General Studies for primary schools and Integrated Science as well as a number of elective subjects in secondary schools. In addition, Hong Kong lacks comprehensive health education training for school teachers and parents. A forthcoming new senior secondary curriculum will include some health education elements in the core subject Liberal Studies, however students should be exposed to health education earlier, as major health related habits and beliefs develop during the adolescent and pre-adolescent years.
The health education needs of students were investigated by reviewing two comprehensive surveys in 1996 and 2000 for primary and secondary students respectively, carried out using versions of a Health Related Behavior Questionnaire (HRBQ) originating from the United Kingdom, but adapted for the Hong Kong situation. The outcomes reflected that students may generally need to be offered better health education for a more healthy life-style.
Medium scale survey research was adopted here to investigate the awareness of parents and teachers for health topics to be taught within the curriculum and their confidence on teaching or talking about health issues with young people. A total of 2,493 parents and 205 teachers from 22 primary and 19 secondary schools were surveyed. Results showed

This study sought to identify how teachers of science in English medium secondary schools in Hong Kong make science content accessible to students through English, the students second language. The strong emphasis on language outcomes in much of the research on late immersion (of which English medium education in Hong Kong is considered an example) indicates that a study which addresses classroom processes may be timely.
The significance of language in immersion education suggested that an awareness by teachers of the part language plays in learning within the curriculum might provide a means by which qualitative differences in the teaching of content could be identified. The study, therefore, attempted to determine whether there are any differences between teachers who are strongly aware of the role of language in learning and those who are weakly aware in the ways they integrate language and content in their teaching to facilitate student learning. Further, it explored how those differences are realised.
A qualitative approach was adopted for the study. A theoretical framework was developed with which to analyse classroom data on the teaching of science through English. The framework was made up of six dimensions describing the integrated teaching of science and the English of science in an immersion context. It was developed from the literature and was further refined as a result of intensive reading and re-reading of lesson transcripts.
Six teachers of science were studied. A questionnaire was used to place each teacher on a language awareness continuum and four were thus classified as strongly language aware and two as weakly language aware. The teachers were observed and recorded teaching the same science topic. Following the lessons, the students were given a test of science which required that they express their understanding in written English. The teachers and some students were also interviewed.
The science test results revealed that students

This thesis examines the history of English education at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) from 1913 to 1964. English literary studies, as a nationalistic academic discourse in England, was an iconic subject in particular for introducing English values and traditions at this colonial "British" university. A critical study of its disciplinary history at HKU raises questions about the impact of colonialism, imperialism and nationalism on the subject and the University at large.
This study employs a mixture of thematic exposition and historical narrative. Thematically, a macroscopic approach was adopted to contextualize the thesis within a broader framework of the history of English literary studies in Britain. University archival materials, staff and student publications and public records were consulted for an overview of the teaching and learning of English in this English-medium university.
Chapter 1 gives an overview of the national significance of the discipline in Britain and its expected roles in the Commonwealth, in relation to the objectives of the English Association founded in 1907. In Chapter 2, the distinctive nature of HKU as a British secular colonial institution is highlighted through a brief set of comparative studies with other western colleges and universities in China. Chapter 3 reconstructs aspects of the first fifty years of the English Department, particularly the period (1920-1951) when it was headed by R. K. M. Simpson. Simpson stressed the interdisciplinarity of English literary studies, and emphasized that English was a gateway to western civilization and culture or "general knowledge". This undercut the general belief that English literary studies merely expounded "Britishness" or "Englishness", and widened its appeal to students in Hong Kong by presenting it as an aid to the acquisition of western knowledge. Chapter 4 is concerned with the practicality and ideology of English Studies as a branch of Arts education. While humanities