This paper reports a case study of teaching Cantonese to Hong Kong ethnic minority pre-schoolers using process drama. Based on Deleuzo-Guattarian concepts of minor literature and language, becoming and de-/re-territorialisation, this paper aims to reconceptualise a playful adaptation of process drama developed by Joe Winston (2012) as a…

Digital multimodal composing (DMC) allows students to mobilize a wide range of multimodal resources to make meaning. While studies in DMC tended to focus on language-learning contexts, few of them examine its use in content-based courses whereby students are proficient L2 users expected to demonstrate understanding of abstract concepts using DMC.…

With the expanding role of English medium instruction (EMI) worldwide there has been an increasing use of English to teach content subjects at tertiary level. In implementing EMI a common assumption has been that the primary issue affecting successful EMI is the English proficiency level of the EMI instructor. This paper reviews this assumption by…

Many scholars and teachers in EFL education should agree that compared with reading and writing, listening has received much less attention. This brief article discusses important gaps existing in EFL listening and overall proficiency development. It presents the case for a greater focus on sounds and actual listening in the classroom and spoken…

Integrated writing is increasingly used in language assessment programmes. As a hybrid task, it requires students to coordinate different language skills, i.e. listening, reading and writing, to retrieve information from multiple sources, and compose an essay for a specific purpose. Tapping into the varied skills that contribute to successful…

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a structural-cum-communicative approach to the teaching of vocabulary to students possessing a low level of English proficiency. A total of 52 foundation degree students taking a 13-week preparatory reading and writing course participated in the present study. Both the control and the…

The present study seeks to explore the long-term impact of an overseas immersion programme on pre-service teachers' professional learning in Hong Kong. In-depth interviews with 11 pre-service teachers about their immersion experiences and post-immersion learning revealed their professional gains and challenges brought by their exposure to…

In Hong Kong, Chinese and English are considered separate mediums of instruction. English immersion is expected for schools that teach with English as the medium of instruction, and direct instruction in Chinese is often used to teach English in Chinese medium schools. Evidently, a great divide persists in the Hong Kong government curriculum. In…

This study explores one teacher's forays into multiliteracies practices and multimodal pedagogies in teaching a language other than English in an international school in Hong Kong. Using the Action Learning Circle as a guiding framework, this study analysed a Chinese language teacher's one-year self-initiated exploration of multiliteracies and…

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…

The language learner strategies research field has often tried to identify the good language learner (GLL) by distinguishing more proficient from less proficient learners. However the notion of 'good' may be problematic without taking into account an individual's linguistic knowledge (LK). This article foregrounds LK in relation to strategy use in…

This article reports the results of a study that assesses the effectiveness of a Philosophy in Schools (PIS) programme in developing students' thinking skills and English competence in Hong Kong. In the study, training and support were provided for three Integrated Humanities (IH) teachers to enable them to teach PIS to their Secondary 3 English…

Against the background of increasing internationalization, Chinese-foreign cooperative education programs are growing in the Chinese higher education sector. With the international teaching environment combined with the local IC education concept, Chinese-foreign cooperative education programs are potentially the ideal platform for the complete…

This article focuses on authenticity of second language identity which has been at issue. Previous research of the authenticity of second language identity has revealed that second language identity may be inauthentic due to the impact from social context and the individual's competence and desires. The discussion in this article aims at exploring…

Recent studies on classroom discourse have challenged the traditional classroom role set and emphasised equal contributions from the participants and the emergence of knowledge through active participation. Co-learning emphasises the process in which teachers and students attempt to adapt to one another's behaviour and learn from each other in…