While assessment and its effects on learning such as 'washback' have been the subject of much debate (e.g. Alderson & Wall, 1993; Bachman, 1995: 356; Alderson & Hamp Lyons, 1996; Shohamy et al, 1996; Andrews et al, 2002), assessment as a tool for developmental, not merely evaluative, purposes has probably not received sufficient attention (e.g. Dickinson, 1996: 101; Gardner, 1999). Of interest to this study is a project by Dickinson (1996: 106) in which participants (tutors and learners) are shown to have benefited from a scheme of collaborative assessment.
[Copyright of Language Learning Journal is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09571730585200161]

Grading, feedback, and reporting of student achievement are key elements that support learning. This article reports an interview study on a range of English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) teachers' classroom assessment practices at the tertiary level in Canada, Hong Kong, and China. The interviews focused on teachers' use of marking criteria, student involvement in classroom assessment decisions and activities, and reporting procedures. The results demonstrate how these teachers make day-to-day decisions in these three contexts, thus adding to our understanding of ESL/EFL classroom assessment practices.
[Copyright of Language Assessment Quarterly is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15434300701348409]

This article reports on an action research project on ways and means of promoting learner autonomy in an ESL classroom. It focuses on the implementation of an autonomy-based English program with a group of first-year university students at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The context and objective of this autonomy-based program are presented, classroom procedures and group learning tasks are described, and suggestions are provided for teachers to adapt these procedures and tasks to suit the needs of their particular students.
[Copyright of TESL Canada Journal is the property of TESL Canada.
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Hong Kong's 150 years of colonisation by the British is a classic example of how globalisation comes into direct contact with a local Chinese culture and creates cultural hybridities. The paper presents a framework for developing a hybrid guidance curriculum, drawing together western traditions of developmental contextualism in guidance and Chinese traditions of Confucian humanism in moral education. The core of the framework is a hybrid self, integrating the individualist and the embedded self. The paper highlights the importance of culture and context in considering school guidance and the 'fluid' and dynamic nature of 'glocalisation' working towards integration.
[Copyright of Globalisation, Societies & Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14767720500046344]

In most EFL settings, reading is seen as related to language subjects only. Students rarely read for pleasure; they think that reading is part of the textbook-related activity. With the implementation of an extensive reading scheme and school-based assessment, students in Hong Kong begin to see reading a little differently. This paper investigates the effectiveness of a new whole-school approach reading scheme in a Chinese school in Hong Kong. Students read at least 15 minutes every school day in either Chinese or English. Results of the questionnaires and the interviews, conducted for teachers and students, indicate that teachers and students see the role of reading differently. It concludes that junior level students who have less public examination pressure enjoy reading better than the senior students. The paper informs educators in non-Asian countries as well; they will know why students from Asia are reluctant to read. The implication is that when reading has not been formed as a habit, holding up a book will be considered just part of school work.
[Copyright of Asian EFL Journal is the property of Nanzan University.
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This paper focuses on the case discussion leadership of expatriate lecturers in two sections of an English-medium international business course in Hong Kong. As well as reviewing the videotapes, transcripts, and field notes of the discussions, interviews were held with the case leaders and a sampling of students to better understand the cross-cultural learning situation. Using a typology of questions adapted from Christensen (1991) and Long and Sato (1983), the lecturers' questions and student responses in the "Panda Furniture" and "Swatch" case discussions were coded and analyzed. The findings suggest certain strategies that case leaders can use to encourage active student participation (the "nails to stick up") in second language discussions involving a large number of Asian students.
[Copyright of Journal of Teaching in International Business is the property of Routledge . Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J066v13n01_05]

Assessment is generally seen as one of the key challenges in the field of self-access learning (Gardner & Miller, 1999; Champagne et al., 2001; Lai, 2001; Kinoshita Thomson, 1996). Many researchers and practitioners point to difficulties with assessing language gains in an environment in which variables cannot comprehensively be controlled for. Furthermore, assessing the development of learning gains, such as the ability to plan and manage independent learning or to approach a learning task strategically (a key aim of self-access learning) relies on underdeveloped methodologies and assessment tools.
This article reports on a study of current approaches to assessment in self-access in 46 centres in 5 countries (Germany , Hong Kong , New Zealand, Spain and Switzerland). These centres were visited and extensive interviews were conducted with their managers. The interviews were based on a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) of each centre. Data from the interviews were analysed to identify current assessment practice. It was found that more than half of all centres conducted no form of assessment at all. The remaining centres showed a wide range of assessment measures such as self-assessment, which was the most common type of assessment, collaborative assessment with an advisor, external examinations and tests, teacher assessment, advisor assessment, peer evaluation and assessment through a panel. There was little evidence of a consistent approach to assessment in the centres, and its application seemed haphazard. There was no evidence that the instruments were checked for validity or reliability.
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Differential gender performance in standardized mathematics assessment has long been a heated topic. Gender gaps of varied magnitude have been identified on large-scale assessments in the United States. To continue the investigation, this study examined male and female performance on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003 mathematics along four in-depth dimensions (strand, content topics, competency cluster, and item format). Furthermore, to identify the shared and unique patterns of gender differences, students from Hong Kong were brought into the comparison. Males in both counties demonstrated superior performance, particularly on complex multiple choice items. Females scored higher on probability, algebra, and reproduction items. Hong Kong students showed a larger gender gap than U.S. students. However, the within-country gender differences were considered small compared with the significant between-country performance differences. (Some PISA participants are not countries, but education systems representative of countries (e.g., Hong Kong). However, for purpose of simplicity, instead of using "countries/systems" every time, the generic term "countries" was used to refer to countries or systems.) Hong Kong students predominantly outperformed U.S. students, including items that measure complex mathematical reasoning, an area well documented to favor U.S. students.
[Copyright of International Journal of Testing is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15305050902733547]

Informed by knowledge of linguistics, research findings in the areas of monolingual and bilingual acquisition, dyslexia and speech therapy clinical practice, five factors are proposed to argue that the acquisition of English by young non-native learners can be enhanced by learning activities which take into account factors of developmental sequence in language acquisition, language-specific properties, the relationship between oral and written language, the what-to-learn-first issue and the quality of the language input. Proper language goals can be set and appropriate activities designed, only if the language input provider interacts with a learner in a concrete activity while being sensitive to the developmental trajectory of monolingual speaking children, the development of the less dominant language in a bilingual child, the prosodic and phonological differences between the learner's mother tongue and the target language, the importance of phonological awareness which defines dyslexia, the use of non-abstract language structures grounded in concrete lexical items in the early stage of language acquisition and the strategy of expanding learners' utterance by one element as used in speech therapy.
[Copyright of Early Years: An International Journal of Research and Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09575140600898456]