This study investigates the impact of Filipina domestic workers (FilDWs), a marginalized group in Hong Kong (HK), on HK children's language development. It focusses on FilDWs' influence on the second language (L2) English of bilingual HK primary school children attending an English Medium of Instruction school. The elements investigated are L2…

While most empirical studies have investigated the improvement of learners' L2 spoken proficiency via speaking-related interventions, the present study examined the same topic through a different modality: listening. Ninety-five first-year tertiary-level students of English as a second language (ESL) in Hong Kong participated in this three-month…

Cognitive factors have been recognised as important in the interpreting process, but whether they could serve as valid components of interpreting aptitude still awaits further investigation. This study explores the predictive value of cognitive fluency in the simultaneous interpreting (SI) performance of trainee interpreters. Cognitive fluency…

Despite English being a core and compulsory part of the curriculum for Chinese English-as-a-second-language (ESL) learners, it is nevertheless often highly challenging for them. This is partly due to the discrepancies between English's citation and spoken form and the lack of recognition this pronunciation receives within ESL classrooms. With this…

Fluent speakers of a target language choosing to enrol in beginner-level courses at tertiary institutes could be considered unfair. In this paper, however, based on data obtained from in-depth qualitative interviews with 12 students at a Hong Kong university, we show that fluent speakers of Japanese -- a widely-spoken foreign language in Hong Kong…

This study investigates how second language (L2) fluency is influenced by two factors: Pre-task planning and content familiarity. Planning was adopted as a between-participant variable, combined with content familiarity as a within-participant variable, in a 2 × 2 split-plot factorial design. Nineteen measures of fluency phenomena, constituting…

This study determines the fine-grained bottom-up linguistic features involved in successful second language (L2) English academic group oral tutorial discussion through the use of a spoken learner corpus composed of more than 20 hrs of L2 production. Student performances were graded by teacher-raters using a can-do rating scale, which assessed…

Studying task repetition for adult and young foreign language learners of English (EFL) has received growing interest in recent literature within the task-based approach (Bygate, 2009; Hawkes, 2012; Mackey, Kanganas, & Oliver, 2007; Pinter, 2007b). Earlier work suggests that second language (L2) learners benefit from repeating the same or a…

This paper reports on a focused investigation into the immediate effects of oral narrative task repetition by two adult EFL learners of intermediate and high proficiency. Two participants performed a narrative speaking task after watching a cartoon video clip and repeated their performance three times, followed by a retrospective report in an…

This paper presents a framework for incorporating the assessment of psycholinguistic constructs into spoken language proficiency testing. Although response time and automaticity of language processing are vital factors in language acquisition, as constructs they are rarely explicitly assessed in language tests. It is proposed that efficiency of…

This study employed Bachman and Palmer's (2010) Assessment Use Argument framework to investigate to what extent the use of a second language oral test as an exit test in a Hong Kong university can be justified. It also aimed to help test developers of this oral test identify the most critical areas in the current test design that might need…

The Inviting School Survey-Revised (ISS-R) was adapted and translated into Traditional Chinese (ISS-RC), using a five-step process, based on international test administration guidelines, involving judgmental, logical, and empirical methods. Both versions were administered to a convenience sample of Chinese-English fluent Hong Kong school community…

Using English as a global communicating tool makes Taiwanese people have to speak in English in diverse international situations. However, consonants and vowels in English are not all effortless for them to articulate. This phonological reduction study explores concepts about phonological (articulating system) approximation. From Taiwanese folks'…

This article revisits a question posed by Hyland [(1997). Is EAP necessary? A survey of Hong Kong undergraduates. "Asian Journal of English Language Teaching, 7," 77-99] in the Hong Kong higher education context: Is EAP necessary? The article presents the overall findings of a large-scale, multi-faceted investigation into the language…

This research note reports on a study to investigate what English language skills are used by new graduate employees in their daily work in various departments in four banks in Hong Kong. Through interviews with 16 new bank employees across these four banks and the use of questionnaires, my aim was to determine what proportion of their daily…