Past Seminars

The educational potentials of social media both in the formal and informal learning contexts have been widely acknowledged. However, how social media use in the informal contexts might influence students’ learning in the formal contexts is still underexplored. Path analysis of 141 survey responses from secondary school ethnic minority students in Hong Kong revealed that voluntary access to Chinese social media in daily life influenced these students’ ideal L2 self and motivated efforts in learning Chinese both directly and indirectly via bicultural integration identity and bicultural competence. The findings confirmed that social media practices in the informal contexts may influence students’ motivated efforts in learning in the formal contexts. The study suggests promoting ethnic minorities’ extramural use of host culture social media to influence their acculturation into the host culture and motivation in learning the host culture’s language. It further highlights the importance of equipping ethnic minority students with the necessary socio-cultural and communication skills to facilitate positive intercultural engagement on these sites so as to safeguard the positive influences of informal social media use on students’ motivation for learning.

A majority of the global population is multilingual. Although studies have investigated the processes used to produce words in multilingual speakers, one criticism of this research is the emphasis on Indo-European languages including English as the dominant language. The question posed in this presentation is whether cognitive processes that have been assumed in all models of language processing (naming, reading and spelling) extend to multilingual speakers. This is not a trivial question. Multilingual speakers can use very different writing systems. Indeed, even within a language e.g. Japanese and Korean – two or more scripts must be learned to become literate (monolingual bi-scriptals). If the same cognitive mechanisms used to read, spell and write in one type of script have an impact on reading and spelling in different scripts then several clinical and pedagogical implications arise e.g. in diagnosis and treatment of aphasia, dyslexia and dysgraphia in multilingual speakers. One feature of the presentation will be cases of multilingual speakers who display reading and writing disorders in typologically different scripts. These cases highlight the many similarities across languages.​​

In English as the medium of instruction (EMI) schools, students learn some or all non-language content subjects through their second/foreign language (L2). Their content knowledge is also assessed in their L2. Since most of these students are still acquiring the target L2, they face the demands and challenges in both cognitive and linguistic aspects. Yet, there has been limited research exploring (i) the interplay between cognitive and linguistic demands imposed on students by EMI assessments, and (ii) whether and how EMI teachers, who are usually subject specialists, help their students cope with those challenges. This study seeks to address these two important questions. In the first phase of the study, over 4,900 questions in Science/Biology textbooks, workbooks and public examination papers in Hong Kong secondary education were analysed to examine their cognitive and linguistic demands. Differences between formative and summative assessments, and between junior and senior secondary levels were also explored. The second phase of the study then investigated the instructional and assessment practices of two science teachers in Hong Kong EMI schools to examine to what extent they incorporated language instruction in their science lessons, which may have affected how well students were prepared to deal with EMI assessments. These findings together illuminate pedagogical practices in EMI classrooms, particularly when considering the alignment among teaching objectives, instruction and assessment.

The aims of this paper are threefold. First, it describes the design of the enhanced version of the Essay Critiquing System (ECS2.0) for English writing, drawing on second language acquisition theories. Then it reports and compares the writing behaviours, responses to the system feedback and performances of 89 Secondary 3 and 4 students aged 13-16, representing high, mid and low English proficiency levels of three secondary schools in Hong Kong, after using the system in five workshops. With reference to the Paired Samples Test results, the three groups of students demonstrated a statistically significant difference (p<.05) in the timing of seeking their initial feedback from the system, and improvement in content score over the period of the study. The recorded verbal protocols of 12 students revealed the ways they incorporated the system feedback into their writings and revisions. Finally, students highly rated the usefulness of the system, and valued the frequent and comprehensible writing feedback. The quantitative and qualitative data and students’ responses provided useful learning-related information for teachers and schools to understand students’ learning process and progress, and could help them make informed pedagogical decisions to optimize opportunities for computer-supported English writing and learning in their contexts.

In this paper, I seek to deconstruct the discourses that naturalise and normalise what I call ‘postcolonial desires for colonial English’, a phenomenon observed in many officially post-colonial or independent societies, as well as in contexts themselves considered imperial powers. I do this first by tracing the historical origins of the gradual inscription of these desires upon the subjectivities and cultural imaginaries of the colonised by analysing the historical processes of imperialism, colonialism and Cold War structures, and the cultural and psychological aftermath of such processes. I conclude by outlining what is needed to interrupt the working of the effects of these processes at the level of subjectivity and cultural imaginary, and propose new ways of reconstituting desires in learning languages in multilingual contexts without subscribing to historical or contemporary hierarchies of languages.