Past Seminars

This seminar will first present an anti-plagiarism intervention programme, called UPCC, and its effectiveness in developing junior secondary school students’ understanding of plagiarism and their ability to avoid plagiarism in project-based learning (PjBL); then with an analysis of a corpus of Chinese-medium interim texts collaboratively composed by the students on a group work platform (PBworks), we will show how the learners used and cited sources, in ways that leave room for pedagogical intervention. Implications will be discussed in relation to the design of PjBL, creation of source-use guidelines, in-service teacher education, and future research.

This talk explores the tensions and complexities of developing second language teachers and teacher educators’ understanding of assessment literacy through a collaborative action research project in the context of language assessment reform in Hong Kong. Drawing on the principles of critical discourse analysis and social theories, I will share textual data from the study (interviews, emails and meeting transcripts) and examine school-university collaboration through the lens of praxis to show how teachers and teacher educators learnt together as professionals – what worked and what didn’t work. Findings and implications for school-university partnership as praxis for the professional development of language teachers in the context of education reform will be discussed.

People from less advantaged social backgrounds, ethnic and culturally diverse groups remain under-represented in medicine worldwide (Association of American Medical Colleges, 2011; BMA, 2009). Although Widening Access (WA) programmes have been implemented to encourage applicants from diverse social backgrounds, recent evidence from the United Kingdom indicates that those from less affluent backgrounds remain less likely to apply and less likely to gain an accepted offer to study medicine than applicants from more “traditional” backgrounds (Steven et al., 2016). This paper investigates how language use from within medical schools contributes to social exclusion in medical education. By examining authentic data from interviews with Medical Admissions Deans from 26 UK medical schools, this paper considers the linguistic barriers to reducing inequality in medical education. Critical Discourse analysis is employed in order to identify the construction of ‘othering’ discourse in statements that refer to students undertaking WA programmes. The results indicate that language use serves to maintain prejudice and block reform of WA practices. This highlights prevalent social development barriers and a need for a review of language use in medical education to promote inclusivity and reduce social inequality.

(1): This talk examines the effectiveness of “Reading to Learn, Learning to Write (R2L)” pedagogy (Rose, 2012) in teaching Chinese to Non-Chinese Speaking (NCS) students. The R2L pedagogy is a genre-based teaching method, providing explicit sufficient scaffolding for students in literacy learning. It was applied to teach students to read and write texts of different genres in secondary Chinese after school class in consecutive time periods in Hong Kong context. From the analysis of pretest and posttest as well as student interviews, this pedagogy has been proven effective in helping students increase their generic and linguistic repertoire in written Chinese composition.

(2) : The talk reviews a number of studies carried out about teaching Chinese language to ethnic minorities in Hong Kong and highlights the importance of a cultural responsive and empowering approach to it. The studies reveal emotional and practical challenges faced by schools, teachers, students and families, and their agency and methods used in overcoming the various hurdles. The studies on one hand indicated that school level curriculum innovation and teachers’ and students’ transformative experiences are crucial; yet on the other hand that the effectiveness has very much been constrained by the language education policy held fast by the authority.

In this talk I will address some recent public controversy about bilingual education in one European country: Spain. I will examine outspoken critiques by prominent intellectuals and members of the public about the educational practice of teaching school academic subjects through English as a medium of instruction. I will also briefly discuss some research which casts doubt on the outcomes of bilingual education programs, and some critiques of other research and evaluation which has highlighted possible bias and methodological shortcomings in studies which reported favourable results. I will argue that proponents of bilingual education, whether at the levels of policy, pedagogical practice or research, need to have more visibility in public debates about the goals and realistic outcomes of bilingual programs, in order to counter deep-seated myths about the effects of bilingual education on individual plurilingualism and societal multilingualism.