Public Lecture Series 2021

With more out-of-school second language learning opportunities, youths are increasingly practicing Extramural English, or “any type of contact that young people (learners) have with English outside the walls of the classroom” (Sundqvist, 2011, p. 107). Several research studies have reported that Extramural English is positively linked with speaking. However, most studies, particularly intervention research for improving learners’ speaking, were implemented within classroom settings or without baseline data of the control group, which reduced the true effects of the intervention. In this talk, we will discuss how Extramural English can be integrated into formal contexts through school-university collaboration. Since this project is at an early stage, we welcome comments and suggestions from the audience.

About the Speakers:

Lee Ju Seong is Associate Head of the Department of English Language Education at the Education University of Hong Kong, specializing in Computer Assisted Language Learning (particularly in extramural digital contexts). 
 
Mary Beth Osburn is the Native English Language Teacher at Fukien Secondary School (Siu Sai Wan). With 30 years of teaching and curriculum development experience in Canadian schools, Osburn is interested in educational innovation that helps students learn about the world they live in, both as content specialists and as coherent communicators
 
Emma Yeung is Head of the English Department at Fukien Secondary School (Siu Sai Wan). Yeung is passionate about creating authentic, student-centered approaches for new language learners. Yeung believes diversity drives instructional strategies in exciting ways and that it is more advantageous to identify and focus on student assets rather than deficits.

What we want / what we prefer is not always what is best for us. We can find many examples of this from our daily lives, for instance that unhealthy food tends to taste better than healthier alternatives. In this talk, I will argue that the same can be said with regard to the process of teaching and learning, specifically that there is often a mismatch between what we feel or think to be effective and the actual effectiveness of many teaching and learning practices.  Drawing upon a body of research into the science of learning, including some of my own recent research in the Hong Kong context, I will discuss the learning behaviors and teaching practices that promote long-term learning and retention, as well as some common teaching and learning strategies that do not.

About the Speaker:
Dr John Rogers (PhD, University College London) is an assistant professor within the Department of English Language Education at The Education University of Hong Kong. His research interests center on the cognitive mechanisms that underlie second language acquisition, including the roles of attention and awareness in the learning process. He is currently working on a monograph on the effects of time on the learning of second languages.

“Even ah Ma dou know”, English has been an important second language in Hong Kong for over two centuries and influenced the way Hongkongers express their thoughts through different language practices. Foreigners may be very surprised to know that it is almost impossible and challenging for many Hongkongers not to speak any English word in their daily conversation, and this indicates that how English has played an important part in Hongkongers’ life. From Chinese Pidgin English to Kongish, English has been integrating cleverly to suit different economical and social functions in Hong Kong. The lecture will first introduce these hybrid practices of Chinese and English in Hong Kong from a chronological perspective, followed by a discussion on some creative usages of Kongish, other than the famous line “What 7 he say”.

About the Speaker:

In the daytime, Mr Nick Wong, who does not go to school by bus, is a lecturer in the Center for Language Education, torturing and teaching English to HKUST students. At night, he proclaims himself as the “Chef Editer” (not typo) or a.k.a a "keyboard fighter", writing and sharing posts in Kongish on his Facebook Page "Kongish Daily". Somehow, his night duty is more successful than his daytime one: this daytime nobody has been interviewed by various media for his midnight Kogish project, such as 100Most, Apple Daily, Mingpao, Next magazine, RTHK, SCMP, Singtao, The Straits Times, and even (blessed by) Wenweipo, to name a few. Currently, Kongish Daily has (only) around 70,000 subscribers on Facebook.

In this talk, we will take a journey to explore, discuss, and challenge some common beliefs about the English languages and to reflect upon how these beliefs shape our actions. Some of the questions we will explore include: Where does “correct” English come from? How old is it and was it always “correct”? Why is this English considered more correct than other Englishes? Who made the decision? And is it ever possible and desirable for everyone to use the same “correct” English? What do the current academic debates say about which Englishes to teach and by what kind of teachers? And, is language mixing in the English classroom wrong?

About the Speaker:
Dr. Katherine Chen is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and Director of the English Language Centre at the University of Macau. She had previously taught at the University of Hong Kong and the University of Michigan, and had trained international PhD students to be instructors in Michigan. Her research specialities include language ideologies and identities, multilingualism and transnationalism. See her profile at https://sites.google.com/view/katherine-chen

Every human being is different and indeed unique. We are better at some things, and not as good at others. When it comes to learning second/foreign languages, we may wonder why some people do better than others. This question of what makes a good language learner is explored by research endeavours in learning strategies. In this talk, I will outline a range of learning strategies used by second language learners and discuss how these strategies are deployed by more effective language learners. I will also exemplify how language learners can become more strategic, and consequently more successful, based on findings from empirical research. The talk will end with some practical suggestions on language learning.

About the Speaker:
Daniel Fung (DPhil, University of Oxford) is an assistant professor in the Department of English Language Education at The Education University of Hong Kong. His research interests include listening comprehension strategies, vocabulary acquisition, assessment practices, and English Medium Instruction.

Grounded in multimodality and the new literacies studies, multimodal composing can be seen as an emerging approach to language teaching in the contemporary digital era. In this talk, I will give an overview to the relevant constructs and rationales for multimodal composing in language teaching. I will also talk about how multimodal composing can be implemented, with a focus on the methodological frameworks, empirical benefits, and contested issues.

About the Speaker:
Lianjiang Jiang (PhD, University of Hong Kong) is an assistant professor within the Department of English Language Education at the Education University of Hong Kong. His research interests center on digital multimodal composing, multimodal feedback in second language writing, and second language teacher education. His publications have appeared in TESOL Quarterly, Journal of Second Language Writing, Computer Assisted Language Learning, Language Teaching Research, and Teaching and Teacher Education, etc. 

Bilingual programmes in which a second language is used as the medium of instruction are gaining popularity at different levels of schooling around the world, and content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is one type of such programmes. In this talk, drawing upon recent research on theory and practice of CLIL in various regional and national contexts, including some of my own, I will introduce the CLIL approach with an overview of its recent development and a discussion on its importance for both students and teachers. Guiding frameworks and basic principles for the design and implementation of CLIL in English as a second/foreign language classrooms will also be suggested.

About the Speaker:
Yiqi Liu (April) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language Education at the Education University of Hong Kong. Her main teaching and research interests include discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, English language teaching and Language across the Curriculum (LAC)/Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL).

While in theory teachers (linguists included) might claim ‘all languages are equal’, in practice some languages are treated more equally than others. Despite several years of sociolinguistic research indicating all ‘non-standard’ varieties are equally rule-governed and well-formed systems as standard varieties, prejudices continue to exist in our society, including among teachers. Arguably, since beliefs are strong indicators of teachers’ behaviors in the classroom, this has serious implications for teacher education and professional development. In this talk, I will explain why teachers continue to hold these beliefs despite persuasive evidence to the contrary, even when the outcome is less than satisfactory. Drawing upon research into the science of beliefs and primary data collected from Indian teachers, I will discuss how long-held beliefs continue to go unchallenged and adversely affect teachers’ behaviors and student learning outcomes.

About the Speaker:
Prerna Bakshi (PhD, University of New England) is a Post-Doctoral Fellow within the Department of English Language Education at the Education University of Hong Kong. Her research examines language policy, national identity, and political issues in education.

Parents, teachers and policy makers are concerned about how immigrant students acquire the mainstream language, achieve academic success, and attain upward social mobility. In this seminar, I will share a series of research findings on the nexus of acculturation, gender, identity, family language policy, and second language learning among South Asian immigrant adolescents in Hong Kong. The findings have implications for a) how to assist migrant parents to better prepare their children for educational success and bi-acculturation; b) policy makers to develop feasible language and education policy; and c) government discussions on resource allocation for programmes promoting interculturalism and diversity in society.

About the Speaker:
GU Mingyue Michelle is an Associate Professor in Faculty of Humanities at the Education University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include internationalization in higher education, language policy and planning, family language policy, multilingualism and mobility, discourse theory and analysis, and teacher professional development. She received the Research Excellence Award in 2017 and Young Researcher Award in 2015 at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 

South and South East Asian learners encounter persistent difficulty in acculturation due to various psychosocial reasons. However, successful acculturation directly determines these learners’ academic success, including language learning. Social media hold great potential for immigrants’ acculturation and language learning. In this seminar, I’ll share a series of research findings on how a group of South and South East Asian secondary school students in Hong Kong engage with social media in their everyday life to access Chinese culture and Chinese people, and how their engagement in social media relates to their acculturation and Chinese language learning.

About the speaker: 
Chun Lai (PhD, Michigan State University) is an associate professor at the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests center around technology and language learning, with a special focus on learners’ self-directed use of technology for language learning beyond the classroom.