Faculty Newsletter

New Era for CHL: 2021/22 CHL Annual Retreat

The Department of Chinese Language Studies (CHL) held the 2021-22 Retreat on 23 June 2022, with the theme of “New Era for CHL”.

Department of Chinese Language Studies

Sharing the Research Findings: The 2nd Second Language Acquisition Symposium

The Department of English Language Education (ELE) held the 2nd Second Language Acquisition (SLA) Symposium featuring seven emerging and well-established second language acquisition scholars from Hong Kong and abroad sharing in Opening Keynote online on 5 March 2022.

Department of English Language Education

LML Gained Positive Feedback in the Departmental Review and Benchmarking Exercise

The Department of Linguistics and Modern Language Studies (LML) completed its second departmental review and benchmarking exercise in March 2022 via Zoom. Chaired by Professor Stefan Th. Gries from the Department of Linguistics of University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, the Review Panel included Professor Umberto Ansaldo from the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry of Curtin University, Australia, Mrs Shirley Duthie, Principal of The Education University of Hong Kong Jockey Club Primary School, Dr Chan Ka Shing Kevin, Head of the Department of Psychology, EdUHK and Dr Liu Fung Ming Christy, Associate Head of the Department of Linguistics and Modern Language Studies, EdUHK.

Department of Linguistics and Modern Language Studies

Interactive Non-formal Modern Language Learning Activities Sparked Students’ Learning Interests

To enhance students’ learning experience of modern languages and to promote multilingualism and multiculturalism, the Department of Linguistics and Modern Language Studies (LML), with the support of French international tutors and Japanese international tutors, organised a number of online non-formal language and cultural activities on French and Japanese. The activities provided a relaxed environment for students and staff to appreciate the French and Japanese languages and cultures. The participants could also take these activities as an opportunity to practice their language skills by interacting with native speakers.

Department of Linguistics and Modern Language Studies

“MyTopoHK” Mobile Application Launched to Promote Reading and Writing of Literary Works on Hong Kong’s Landscape

The Department of Literature and Cultural Studies has developed a mobile application called “MyTopoHK” - the first interactive application for reading and writing literary works on Hong Kong’s landscape. The project aims to promote reading and creative writing by motivating users to explore and observe Hong Kong’s geographical space, to strengthen the connection between textual expressions and the smartphone generations, and stimulate interest in local historical stories.

Department of Literature and Cultural Studies

The First Storytelling Conference in EdUHK: A Big Success

On 10 April 2022 (Sunday), the Centre for Language in Education (CLE) hosted the 2022 Storytelling Conference, The Taken Roads. Two student speakers and three invited guest speakers presented true stories about their life experiences in front of a live virtual audience.

Centre for Language in Education

Virtual Joint Seminar on Chinese Language Learning in Multilingual and Multicultural Context Organised to Promote the Academic Exchange between Singapore and Hong Kong

To promote the research on Chinese Language education and academic exchange between Singapore and Hong Kong, the Centre for Research on Chinese Language and Education (CRCLE) of The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) and the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language (SCCL) have co-organised a virtual joint seminar on 3 March 2022 (Thursday). The topic of this joint seminar was “Chinese Language Learning in Multilingual and Multicultural Context”.

Centre for Research on Chinese Language and Education

GBA Life Education Writing Competition@EdUHK Promotes Gratitude and Love

“The Third Greater Bay Area Life Education Writing Competition” (“the competition”) organised by The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) was successfully completed on 9 June 2022 with an online award ceremony and a sharing session which attracted more than 200 schools and families to attend. The competition received more than 12,000 contributions from students in 500 schools from cities in the Greater Bay Area, including Macau, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Zhongshan, and Hong Kong.

Professor John Erni, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities (FHM) of EdUHK pointed out that, “‘Gratitude and Love’ is a traditional virtue of the Chinese culture; also, caring culture, love, and gratitude are universal values of the world today. With the COVID-19 pandemic still raging around the world, at this historical moment, the sciences and the humanities must join hands to tackle the crisis together. At FHM, we think beyond surviving global crises to push ourselves to engage in more interdisciplinary studies that can better prepare our students to be professionally trained, ethically responsible, and culturally innovative.”

Department of Chinese Language Studies

Second Majors and Minors: A Complement for Teacher Development

Lai Rachel, Year 4 Student from Bachelor of Education (Honours) (English Language) – Secondary in 2021/22

Free electives help us develop interests outside our major. While students may take courses that interest them in general, they can also choose to narrow their focus by electing to study a second major or a minor. With prudent planning, the arrangement can complement our development as competent teachers.

Faculty of Humanities

Receiving the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS) to Study in Hong Kong: Sharing from Liubov Darzhinova, an ELE Doctoral Student

Liubov Darzhinova, a doctoral student from the Department of English Language Education

In 2019, I was all over the moon after receiving the HKPFS to study PhD at EdUHK. Even though it would mean for me to bid farewell to Hungary after two amazing years spent there, I chose Hong Kong for its mixture of Eastern and Western influences, similar to the city where I come from, Elista, the capital of the Republic of Kalmykia, Russia.

Department of English Language Education

My Learning Journey in MATCIL

Ms Liu Congxin, Graduate of Master of Arts in Teaching Chinese as an International Language [MATCIL] in 2022

In 2021, I entered The Education University of Hong Kong with a passion for my master’s degree. The reason I chose to study Teaching Chinese as an International Language as my major because, first of all, I have been teaching Chinese as a second language in both the United States and Hong Kong. In terms of the first reason, I realized that although we are native speakers, it is not easy to teach our own language to foreigners. It requires professional language knowledge, scientific pedagogy, and even linguistic psychology. Especially, while we are talking about metaverse, we should link Chinese language teaching to technology because Chinese language teaching needs to keep up with the times to be flourishing.

Faculty of Humanities

我在學校體驗的得著

2022年國際漢語教學文學碩士畢業生－阮敏明小姐

在實習期間，我每天都會到指導老師的課堂觀課學習。每一次試教後，我們會一起開會討論教學過程中做得好及尚需完善的地方，因此，我非常感謝整個實習團隊，讓我學會欣賞自己教學上做得好的地方，也不會畏懼自己做錯的地方，因為導師會和我一同面對，並想出解決的辦法，使我看到自己越來越大的進步。

Faculty of Humanities

“Learn Cantonese with Big Data” Launched to Enhance the Effectiveness of Learning Cantonese

The mobile app entitled “Learn Cantonese with Big Data”, funded by SCOLAR and Language Fund, was launched in March 2022. Different from traditional dictionaries and online dictionaries, this mobile app adopted a corpus-based approach by analysing authentic language data of a two-million Chinese character corpus which cover a wide range of genres and topics used in daily situations. Besides basic lexical information such as pronunciations in Putonghua and Cantonese, radicals and stroke numbers, the mobile app provides usage information, including frequencies of the entries, verb-object and classifier-noun collocations. The mobile app is a knowledge transfer outcome of Digital Humanities research in data-driven learning and mobile-assisted language learning. It is a portable and accessible self-learning tool that can enhance the effectiveness of learning Cantonese. The project was led by Dr Andy Chin (Department of Linguistics and Modern Language Studies), Dr Tse Ka Ho (Department of Chinese Language Studies) and Dr Shin Kataoka (Department of Linguistics and Modern Language Studies). Interested parties can download the mobile app at Google Play Store and App Store with the phrase “Learn Cantonese with Big Data” or scan the QR codes below.

Department of Linguistics and Modern Language Studies

Dr Lai Yik Po Receives the RGC Postdoctoral Fellowship to Study the Grammatical Diversity of Chinese Dialects

Dr Lai Yik Po, post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Linguistics and Modern Language Studies, is awarded the 2022/23 RGC Postdoctoral Fellowship to undertake a 36-month research project entitled “Grammatical Diversity of Sinitic Languages and Linguistic Areas in China”. The project aims to investigate the grammatical diversity of Chinese dialects and the areal pattern through a large amount of linguistic data. In addition, a digital database will be built to provide a comprehensive collection of bibliographical data for Chinese dialects with the geographical visualisation feature.

Department of Linguistics and Modern Language Studies

A Key to Unlocking Digital Humanities Research — “EdUHK-NTU Digital Humanities Workshop: Corpus Tools and Text Analysis”

To promote the use of digital tools in linguistic and language studies, an online workshop entitled “EdUHK-NTU Digital Humanities Workshop: Corpus Tools and Text Analysis” was held on 18 February 2022. The workshop was co-hosted by the Centre for Research on Linguistics and Language Studies (CRLLS), Department of Linguistics and Modern Language Studies (LML) and National Taiwan University (NTU). More than 200 participants attended, including postgraduate & undergraduate students, academic teaching staff and the public who show a keen interest in digital humanities.

Centre for Research on Linguistics and Language Studies