Past Seminars

The demographics of the Hong Kong population are becoming more linguistically and ethnically diverse. As of Year 2011, the South Asian ethnic minorities represented 6.4% of the total HK population. The difficulties in mastering Chinese put such non-Chinese speaking (NCS) students at risk of marginalization. Most teachers in kindergartens had little opportunity to learn how to teach learners who are learning Chinese as a second language (L2). Facing these challenges, a 4-Tier Professional Development Model has been developed to prepare linguistically responsive teachers and to improve teachers’ efficacy in developing effective pedagogies for these learners. The implementation and effectiveness of this PD Model will be reported and discussed.

The talk will begin by examining the role homework plays in the EFL classroom. It will then go on to explore the Hong Kong government’s guidelines on homework and their emphasis on ‘Meaningful’ homework, arguing that teachers and school practices often contradict these government guidelines. The speaker will conclude by suggesting factors that could account for school and teachers’ reluctance to follow these guidelines. Implications on how to bridge the gap between policy/guidelines and practice will also be discussed. The speaker will draw on his previous small-scale research project (Moorhouse, 2015) and his experience teaching primary in Hong Kong.