Past Seminars

This study explored the processes of utilization of resources in secondary students’ self-regulated strategic writing for academic studies in an English as medium of instruction context in Hong Kong. Drawing on multiple data sources collected through the observation of lessons, stimulated recall and semi-structured interviews, the study examined the features of six secondary students’ self-regulated writing with focus on how they used resources strategically to overcome challenges in academic writing. Self-regulated strategic writing processes of high achievers and underachievers were compared in the analysis. Differences were found in the ways resource utilization unfolded in the learners’ self-regulated writing activities. Seven processes, namely, noticing, selecting, reorganizing, evaluating understanding, reviewing and memorizing, imitating, as well as adapting, were found in the high achievers’ self-regulated writing, while only imitating and reorganizing were identified in the case of underachievers. Differences were also found in terms of why and how the high achievers and the underachievers imitated and reorganized resources. The study suggests that underachievers should be encouraged to reflect on their self-regulated writing processes and language teachers can help these students to deploy strategies in ways high achievers use them.

In this seminar, I will first outline the reasons why the Hong Kong SAR government’s biliteracy and trilingualism (兩文三語) policy since 1997 is such a tall order, before reviewing empirical evidence in support of alternative measures in our language-in-education policy. The nature of the challenge will be elucidated by examining various critical issues from multiple perspectives: linguistic, sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and curricular. I will then briefly review recent research in neurolinguistic research, with a view to addressing a key question at the level of language policy and planning: Is there room for rethinking the priority of language learning and enhancement support for Cantonese-dominant students at earlier life stages?

This talk will argue that in some contexts, policies and ideologies of language revival which claim to be empowering disadvantaged populations may actually be more closely linked to furthering nationalist agendas. Drawing on interviews and policy analysis, this talk examines how nationalists in both Kazakhstan and Mongolia make use of ideologies of linguistic/ethnic threat and revival to justify potentially exclusionary policies. In Kazakhstan, post-independence promotion of the Kazakh language after its suppression during the Soviet Union has come hand in hand with policies which centralize power among the ethnic Kazakh elite. In Mongolia, discourses about encroaching threats, primarily from China, are used to justify a strain of nationalism centered on keeping the nation “pure” and a glorification of selected national symbols, including the Mongolian language and traditional script. This talk will consider in what ways such discourses are different from or similar to language revival movements which have typically been celebrated by linguists and the general public. Overall this research demonstrates that a critical perspective is necessary to show how framing languages as threatened or reviving can participate in potentially exclusionary nationalist agendas.

Translanguaging refers to the strategic and creative use of one’s available semiotic resources to achieve contingent communicative needs, often transgressing established boundaries between languages as well as between modalities of language. This seminar aims to seek out evidence of translanguaging in everyday textual practices, with a view to exploring the pervasiveness of translanguaging as a social semiotic phenomenon. It first traces the trajectory of the concept since its coinage in the 1990s and briefly reviews its applications in language education, sociolinguistics, and visual studies. It then draws on David Crystal’s understanding of the linguistic formations in text messaging to demonstrate how translanguaging is inherent in mundane communications. Using further authentic, including anecdotal, examples from Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan, the talk elaborates on how translanguaging constitutes a mode of literacy in its own right. It proposes that by virtue of its aberrance and recalcitrance vis-à-vis the language institution, translanguaging provides an alternative pedagogical resource for understanding the dynamism and flux of language performances.

Paper 1: Building Language Support in an EMI Chemistry Classroom: An Exploratory Study by a Science Teacher

Abstract:

Writing in science plays a crucial part in assessment. However, not many science teachers spend time on cultivating students’ skills in communicating science effectively through English. In this presentation, I share my journey of developing a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) and LAC (Language Across the Curriculum) approach to the teaching of senior secondary school Chemistry and address the following research questions:

1. To what extent is students’ content and language awareness raised by increasing language support?
2. To what extent do teachers and students accept the LAC and CLIL approach?

Findings and implications of my exploration study will be discussed.

Paper 2: Thematic Patterns as CLIL Strategies: ‘Concept+Language Mapping’ in Science and Geography Classes

Abstract:

In this presentation, we introduce the ‘Concept+Language Mapping’ method, which we have developed based on Lemke’s theory of thematic patterns to integrate language support into content learning. Preliminary findings from our project schools will be shared showing how students learn both academic content and language and gain confidence in presenting and writing Science and Geography topics using this innovative approach to Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL).