Some of the issues involved in validating two English second-language listening comprehension tests are examined. The tests were two different levels of a listening summary-cloze measure developed for use in a battery of language proficiency tests in the second and fourth years of university-level study in China. In them, students listen to a talk…

A November 1990 recommendation by the Hong Kong government's education department to adopt a language-streaming policy is discussed. The policy would have children tested and assigned to English-medium or Chinese-medium instruction in the sixth year of elementary school. Implications of this development are examined from the point of view of…

A study of reading problems among Hong Kong university students of English as a Second Language has two parts. The first examines a teacher's comparison of a source text with a student's written response. The student subject was a highly-motivated, proficient learner. Discussion of her reading problems focuses on the incidence of misinterpretation…

A study investigated three issues: (1) differences between two types of rhetorical organization of expository text (problem-solution pattern and collection-of-descriptions pattern) in the reading recall of second-language readers; (2) differences between the two types on reading recall of readers at two levels; and (3) relationship between the…

This issue contains five articles, including reports of activities of the University of Hong Kong's English Center, five action research reports, reflections on various conferences, and a book review by Ray Mackay of "Asian Voices in English." The five articles are: "Cultural Syntonicity: Co-operative Relationships between the ESP Unit and Other…

A study looks at two broad issues: (1) the relationship between sentence sequence and 'coherence' in writing of academic discourse in a second language; and (2) identification of likely areas of difficulty for second-language readers. Two approaches to the diagnosis of coherence problems, using experimental manipulation of sentence orders in…

A study investigated the content and predictive validity of Hong Kong's new Use of English Examination (UEE), introduced by the Hong Kong Examinations Authority in 1989. The study set out to discover whether the examination was reliable for determining students' language needs on entering higher education, and whether institutions' existing…

Implications of changes in the Hong Kong secondary school curriculum are examined, focusing on the syllabus leading to a new school-leaving examination in English literature. The new curriculum, based on developments in composition theory and practice and departing from the traditional, narrowly-focused syllabus, emphasizes the process of writing…

Papers on linguistics and language teaching in this volume are the following: "The Revision Process in Academic Writing: From Pen and Paper to Word Processor" (Stephen Chadwick, Nigel Bruce); "Sentence Sequence and Coherence: In Search of Readers' Problems in Academic Discourse" (Desmond Allison); "Plural Marking in Hong Kong English" (Carol…

A study compared the perceptions of two experts from different cultural backgrounds concerning salience of a variety of errors typical of the English written by Hong Kong secondary and college students. A book on English error types written by a Hong-Kong born, fluent Chinese-English bilingual linguist was analyzed for its emphases, and a list of…

Papers on linguistics and language teaching in this volume are the following: "Language in Education: Hard Choices for Hong Kong" (Jo Lewkowicz); "EL2--Medium Education in a Largely Monolingual Society: The Case of Hong Kong" (Nigel Bruce); "A Programme for Semantics" (Laurence Goldstein); "Semantics and Its…

A discussion of Chinese- and English-medium instruction in Hong Kong schools, particularly at the levels of secondary and higher education, focuses on recent recommendations for improved instruction and articulation. The discussion is presented in two parts. The first presents the response of the University of Hong Kong's Language Centre to the…

Papers on linguistics and language teaching in this volume are the following: "'Good' and 'Poor' Writing and Writers: Studying Individual Performance as a Part of Test Validation" (Desmond Allison, Evelyn Cheung); "To Test or Not To Test: That Is the Question" (Keith Tong, Rose Chan, Jo Lewkowicz); "Testing Listening…