Mainland Chinese students' (MCSs') cross-cultural adaptation experiences in Hong Kong have remained under-researched. Our study investigates this phenomenon with a language and social psychology approach and explores the role of Cantonese ability and communication with locals. We invoked Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) to investigate the…

This study investigated the impact of student-selected pairs on emotional engagement and language-learning opportunities generated during collaborative tasks. Sixteen learners of English at a Hong Kong secondary school performed collaborative tasks in two pairing arrangements: student-selected pairing and teacher-assigned pairing (mixed…

This paper contributes to our conceptualization of linguistic identities in English as a lingua franca (ELF) communication by analyzing a group of multilingual international students' narrativized accounts of their ELF communication experiences in an international university in Hong Kong. The findings of the study indicate that despite their…

Despite the increasing use of English as a medium of instruction (EMI), teachers who teach at EMI schools encounter significant challenges, such as difficulties in teaching content-subjects in English and students' limited understanding of content presented in English. To examine the extent of these challenges, six early-full and 14 late-partial…

This paper probes alternative meanings and processes for decolonizing English that arise from the particular geopolitical histories and identities of Hong Kong and engagement with political and translingual activism. I illustrate the positioning and tension between English, 'Kongish' (a mix of English and localized linguistic resources in Hong…

Prior research in Applied Linguistics has explored how teachers mobilise diverse resources in order to make connections between the students' out-of-school knowledge and experiences and the abstract content knowledge. Nevertheless, how teachers can transcend the boundaries of disciplinary knowledge by incorporating relevant content knowledge from…

A growing number of studies have explored the ways how teachers contingently respond to students' unexpected responses or a lack of student responses in second language classrooms. From a sociocultural perspective, teacher contingency involves a departure from the lesson plan in local response to the unexpected or unforeseeable actions in the…

This article reports on a qualitative study investigating the teaching experiences of ESL teachers of ethnic minority students from South Asian countries. Eight ESL teachers from two secondary schools in Hong Kong were interviewed. Informed by the concept of neoliberal governmentality, this study explores the shaping effect of neoliberal education…

A key pedagogical goal in any classroom is to engage students in learning. This study examines how an English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) teacher employs available resources to engage his students in the classroom for promoting participation, keeping the lesson moving forward and meeting the pedagogical goals. The data for this study is based on a…

English medium instruction (EMI) is a growing phenomenon in many countries. Some researchers have investigated the difficulties and strategies students use to cope with EMI. However, the pedagogical challenges faced and strategies used by other key participants, teachers, have been surprisingly under-researched. This study utilizes questionnaire…

Quantitative research on the linguistic acculturation of sojourners in non-Western and multilingual social contexts remains scarce. Revising the Framework of Acculturation Variables (FAV), we propose a parsimonious model exploring the effect of acculturation conditions (trilingual language usage and perceived discrimination), orientations (social…

This dissertation examines the linguistic behavior of code-switching in three groups of highly proficient Cantonese-English bilinguals. Code-switching refers to alternating between two or more languages within the same sentence or between two sentences. While traditional research on bilingualism often compares bilingual speakers against…

While the importance of linguistically responsive teaching (LRT) in multilingual classrooms is well documented, preservice English teachers' conceptions of LRT and the pertinent sociocultural processes that shape their LRT conceptions and practices remain under-researched. Qualitatively examining the experiences and understandings of 15 preservice…

This article drew on the recent dynamic, distributed view of "translanguaging and flows" and the New Materiality view of meaning making to explore content and language integrated learning (CLIL) activities in an English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) secondary Science classroom. Fine-grained analysis of the multilingual and multimodal…

Drawing on the pedagogical framework of critical multilingual language awareness, this article demonstrates how the production of a YouTube video explaining lexical gaps can help language learners construct a translanguaging space and invest in decolonizing practices. Based on a study examining the language and literacy practices of university…