This study employs a content analysis approach to examine the presentation of pronunciation instruction (PI) activities in six elementary school English language teaching (ELT) textbook series used in China. Among the textbooks analyzed, two series are published in English-speaking countries for commercial use, while two are published in China for public schools. The remaining two series are jointly released by Chinese and UK publishers, and are utilized in schools at Shanghai and Hong Kong.Categorizing the PI-related activities based on the framework by Levis and Echelberger (2022), the author discovered that PI is predominantly integrated into listening and speaking activities. The study highlights the evolving design of PI activities in relation to learners' ages, reflecting the individual preferences and beliefs of textbook developers. Notably, most of the surveyed textbook series acknowledge the effectiveness of phonics for teaching pronunciation, yet the use of phonetic alphabet remains minimal. Young learners are encouraged to grasp pronunciation rules through exposure and observation rather than through direct top-down instruction from teachers.This research provides language educators with additional resources for classroom activities and offers textbook writers diverse insights for material development work in the future. Copyright © 2024 John Benjamins Publishing Co.

Entrepreneurial STEM, an interdisciplinary approach blending STEM and entrepreneurship education, has become a new trend for cross-subject collaboration that aims to instill an entrepreneurial mindset in students, enabling them to apply their STEM knowledge across various contexts. In this study, we investigate the challenges and corresponding strategies of head science teachers who initiated an entrepreneurial STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) curriculum in their schools. Grounded in social exchange theory, we explore how head science teachers with entrepreneurial attributes navigated asymmetrical power distribution presented by principals and other subject heads. This collective case study focuses on three schools in Hong Kong that successfully implemented a renowned entrepreneurial STEM curriculum. The findings reveal a common trajectory among head science teachers: initial enthusiastic promotion of the curriculum while meeting resistance; a downscaling and team reform struggles; and a handover and scale-up. This study illuminates the intricate process of balancing power dynamics and stakeholder perceptions through reciprocal negotiation, which were in turn shaped by societal norms. Copyright © 2025 Springer.

This study examined whether two integrated reading -to -write tasks could broaden the construct representation of the writing component of Duolingo English Test (DET). It also verified whether they could enhance DET 's predictive power of English academic writing in universities. The tasks were (1) writing a summary based on two source texts and (2) writing a reading -to -write essay based on five texts. Both were given to a sample (N = 204) of undergraduates from Hong Kong. Each participant also submitted an academic assignment written for the assessment of a disciplinary course. Three professional raters double -marked all writing samples against detailed analytical rubrics. Raw scores were first processed using Multi -Faceted Rasch Measurement to estimate inter- and intra-rater consistency and generate adjusted (fair) measures. Based on these measures, descriptive analyses, sequential multiple regression, and Structural Equation Modeling were conducted (in that order). The analyses verified the writing tasks ' underlying component constructs and assessed their relative contributions to the overall integrated writing scores. Both tasks were found to contribute to DET 's construct representation and add moderate predictive power to the domain performance. The findings, along with their practical implications, are discussed, especially regarding the complex relations between construct representation and predictive validity. Copyright © 2024 Elsevier.

Task representation denotes students' interpretation in which what a learning or assessment task required them to do. An argumentative integrated writing task which involves the use of reading materials as claims or evidences for composing an essay, makes the role of task representation more critical than others, as writers may be confused with whether their task is to focus on synthesizing the reading materials that they comprehend, or expressing their own views. With the aim of exploring the characteristics of task representation and its association with integrated writing, this study invited 474 secondary four students from Hong Kong to participate in think aloud writing protocol followed by stimulated recall interview (36 participants), and complete an integrated writing task and a questionnaire (438 participants). Three factors of the task representation were identified as source use, rhetorical purpose and text format, and significant positive correlations were found between the three factors and integrated writing performance. Theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed. Copyright © 2024 Elsevier.

Liberal arts education in Chinese higher education can be traced back to the liberal arts tradition that existed in China's former Christian universities prior to the 1950s. The mission and goal of liberal arts education in Chinese contexts focuses on cultivating whole persons to serve their societies. Using data from documents and interviews, the study examines the liberal arts tradition for developing whole persons with a spirit of service in China's former Christian universities. It also explores to what extent the legacy has been carried on to the development of liberal arts education in contemporary universities in Chinese societies (Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan). The study provides insight into how some elements of whole person development from faith-based education could contribute to today's higher education reform in terms of the goals of global citizen cultivation. Copyright © 2024 Springer.

While inquiry into the relationship between linguistic features and L2 writing quality has been a long-standing line of research, little scholarly attention has been drawn to the predictive value of linguistic features in assessing the writing quality of English-medium scientific report writing. This study adds to the existing literature by examining the relation of lexical and syntactic complexity to writing quality, based on 106 scientific reports composed by Hong Kong Chinese learners of English in EMI secondary schools. Natural language processing tools were employed to extract computational indices of linguistic complexity features, followed by the use of a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach to investigate their predictive power. The validity of the anticipated construct was confirmed based upon several goodness-of-fit criteria. The SEM analysis indicated that writing quality was predicted by lexical sophistication (i.e., text-based complexity: word range and academic words; psycholinguistic complexity: word familiarity and age-ofacquisition ratings), lexical diversity (i.e., MTLD and VocD), and syntactic complexity (i.e., mean length of sentence and dependent clauses per T-unit). However, the relation of lexical diversity and syntactic complexity to writing quality was mediated by lexical sophistication. Implications for scientific report writing assessment and pedagogy in EMI educational contexts are discussed. Copyright © 2024 Elsevier.

Cantonese-English learners in Hong Kong confront with substantial difficulty in development of English relative clauses. This study aims at verifying predictions of hypotheses about second language learners' development of English relative clauses with data of written Hong Kong English. wh relatives and that relatives in the Hong Kong component of the International Corpus of English were identified. Frequencies of occurrence of distinct types of relative clauses in the Hong Kong component were compared to evaluate whether predictions of Keenan and Comrie's (1977) Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy, Kuno's (1974) Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis, and Hamilton's (1994) Subject-Object Hierarchy Hypothesis are supported by the corpus data respectively. Results indicate that the Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis is supported by data of written Hong Kong English whilst the other two hypotheses are partially supported only. Hypotheses supported by corpus data of written Hong Kong English are suggested to inform English language education in Hong Kong by illuminating the instructional order of different types of English relative clauses. Copyright © 2025 John Benjamins Publishing Co.

Recent years have witnessed a growing application of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technology in writing instruction. Students should mobilise their metacognitive strategies during this endeavour to maximise the benefits of GenAI while avoiding the potential negative impacts. Within the context of tertiary education in Hong Kong, this qualitative research investigates 13 postgraduate students' metacognitive strategies when utilising ChatGPT for English academic writing. Using data collected from audio recordings, semi-structured interviews and human-GenAI chat logs, we explored students' metacognitive strategies within five dimensions, namely, planning, monitoring, evaluating, information management and debugging. The identified themes and subthemes within each dimension exhibited similarities to those observed in other educational settings. Meanwhile, certain metacognitive strategies (e.g., debugging) were found to be unique to the context of GenAI-supported academic writing. This study contributes to the literature in two ways. Firstly, it provides a detailed and thorough understanding of metacognitive strategies, complementing the extensive quantitative research in this area. Secondly, this research expands the framework of metacognitive strategies to the context of GenAI-supported academic writing learning. Copyright © 2025 Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

There has been an increasing number of calls to apply new technologies to learning contexts for STEM education. However, limited studies have explored the role of technology in bridging teachers and children to create STEM knowledge collaboratively. Therefore, early childhood teachers encounter challenges integrating digital technologies to support children’s STEM learning. The challenges include developing effective and innovative scaffolding strategies to incorporate digital technology and visualize the processes of using technologies in children’s STEM knowledge building. This study reports on an in-depth exploratory case study from a kindergarten classroom in Hong Kong, exemplifying a new approach to integrating digital technologies within spatialized STEM learning. The case selected continuity learning episodes from a spatially directed STEM learning unit on making a safe traffic city. Under digital technology-integrated scaffolding, the teacher and children co-created a traffic symbolic system by designing symbols of landmarks, developing and applying spatial language, making maps and traffic games with rules. The thematic analysis was adopted to analyze the teachers’ STEM activity plans and reflective reports. The finding indicated that the process through which the teacher and children collaboratively created STEM knowledge via technology-integrated scaffolding involved recalling spontaneous understanding about everyday concepts, exploring ideas in authentic contexts, sorting and organizing their collected information, and identifying and correlating abstract concepts with corresponding everyday practices. The children required two levels of technology-integrated scaffolding strategies to engage in STEM knowledge collaborative creation: scaffolding for technology using and scaffolding through use of technology. Three novel roles of technology emerged that transform learning from knowledge delivery to collaborative creation in inquiries STEM tasks for young children

Long COVID, where symptoms persist after recovering from COVID-19, can affect cognitive functions like language. However, little is known about its impact on children’s language skills, especially across different school levels. This study investigated the impact of long COVID on language proficiency among 1244 children (Asian; 53.5% boys) from kindergartens (N = 408, Mage = 4.42 ± 1.26 years), primary schools (N = 547, Mage = 9.69 ± 1.96 years), and secondary schools (N = 289, Mage = 14.97 ± 1.85 years) in Hong Kong. Language proficiency was assessed using the Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q), which measured speaking, listening, reading, and writing in both Chinese and English. Participants were categorized into three groups: long COVID, recovered from COVID-19, and no history of COVID-19. One-way and two-way ANOVAs were used to analyze the differences in language proficiency across these groups and school levels. Children with long COVID symptoms exhibited significantly lower overall language proficiency, particularly in speaking and listening, compared to those in the recovered and no-COVID groups. The effect was more pronounced among primary and secondary students, with secondary school students showing the most substantial deficits. No significant differences were found between the recovered and no-COVID groups. The results suggest that long COVID might have detrimental effects on children’s linguistic proficiency. The language development of older students who suffered from long COVID could benefit from receiving targeted educational and therapeutic interventions. Copyright © 2025 by the authors.