Research Projects

Texts and images are commonly found on ancient ritual objects. These ritual objects, whether made of bronze, jade, lacquer, ceramic, or textile, frequently bear decorative motifs or pictorial images on the surface. Inscriptions or texts are somewhat less prevalent. Apart from the inscriptions on bronzes of the Western Zhou and Eastern Zhou periods, texts or words on ancient ritual objects tend to be subordinate to the images, or are there to provide information related to their manufacture. Interestingly though, during the Eastern Han period, some inscriptions or texts on a wide range of ritual objects appeared as separate motifs, or took on a more important role by being placed in a central position on the objects. The project aims to look into the under-researched aspect of these changes of function of texts on ritual objects during the Han times. An extensive survey of archaeological reports, collections and archives in different museums and institutes will develop a comprehensive database of the relevant objects and text records to lay a foundation for the study. In addition, this research will also carefully study the content and the way the texts are displayed on different types of ritual object of the Han period. It will also investigate the provenance of the texts by comparing them with different common textual materials of the same period. By studying archaeological material and historical texts, and adopting the interdisciplinary approach of art historical stylistic analyses and contextual material studies, this research will examine how the role of texts on ritual objects developed, and the changes in the relationship between texts and images on these objects during the Han era, particularly in the burial context. Furthermore, the factors driving the changes will be explored. This may provide insight into the contemporaneous belief in the afterlife, as well as perceptions of immortality.

Empirical corpus-based studies have demonstrated many positive outcomes in learners’ development of various language skills. However, frontline language teachers in primary and secondary schools are unfamiliar with corpus technology, mainly due to the lack of technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) training in corpus technology. To address this knowledge gap, we have recently developed a corpus-based language pedagogy (CBLP) that blends language pedagogy with corpus technology. This proposal aims to frame training in corpus technology for student teachers within the TPACK framework to foster CBLP for effective teaching using corpus technology. This research will also provide a theoretical model by investigating how student teachers in Hong Kong and Mainland China receive TPACK training in corpus technology, and how this can influence their self-efficacies for independent language learning and teaching.

This project seeks to investigate the relationship between tongue movement and tone in speech production – two parts of articulation formerly considered independent from each other. We look at consonant-vowel coordination in Cantonese and Mandarin, two languages with respectively six and four lexical tones, under different tone and speech rate conditions. Both acoustic (formant) and articulatory (high temporal resolution ultrasound tongue imaging) data will be collected for analysis, followed by analysis-by-synthesis using VocalTractLab. Our findings will shed new lights on (i) our understanding of speech production, (ii) individual differences in articulatory control, and demonstrate (iii) the use of articulatory synthesis as a convenient tool for hypothesis-testing in articulation research.

J. M. Synge (1871-1909) was a critically acclaimed man of letters in twentieth-century Irish literature and is most remembered for his plays, such as The Playboy of the Western World (1907) and Riders to the Sea (1904). This year is the 150th anniversary of the dramatist’s work, which has been said to “demonstrate the importance of wildness, resistance and imagination” while simultaneously attracting controversy due to his unconventional depiction of nationhood and women. Compared to other Celtic Revivalists such as William Butler Yeats, Synge and his plays are not well known in the Greater China Area despite his fame in Europe and America. However, the fact that nine translators in China and Taiwan have translated Synge’s plays into Chinese since the 1920s is evidence of a degree of popularity. Though impressive, these translations have not been thoroughly vetted, researched, and critiqued. In this project, I seek to meticulously investigate those Chinese interpretations of Synge’s plays by all nine writers and scholars from China and Taiwan: Guo Moruo (郭沫若), Xu Xuxuan (徐序瑄), Tian Han (田漢), Peng Ching-hsi (彭鏡禧), Ma Ching-chao (馬清照), Chen Ge (陳戈), Tsai Chin-sung (蔡進松), Chang Tsung-chi (張崇旂), and Hsieh Chih-hsien (謝志賢). To further understand the Sinophonic adoption of Synge’s work, my project studies two dramatic performances of his The Playboy of the Western World. The first of which was staged in Beijing in 2006 and second in Taipei in 2016. My plan is to pursue a diachronic, chronologically ordered, study of the translation and staging of Synge’s plays in the Greater China Area, with a view to addressing a number of critical issues at the time they were transposed for a Chinese-speaking world: the nature and pattern of intercultural translation, the mutuality of western impact and Chinese agency, the problem of the domestication and exoticization of the ancestral literary artifact, the manipulating intervention of ideological imperatives, and the linguistic question of translatability. To draw a complete and holistic picture of how Synge’s work was received and understood, in addition to analyzing the nine Chinese translations and parsing the two performances, my study will canvass and examine a host of other materials, which will include academic articles and theses as well as newspaper and magazine articles. Vertically, my research contributes to a deeper understanding of the translation, reception, and impact of Synge’s plays in the Greater China Area. Horizontally, my work sheds light on the meanings and implications of the translations of his work as an integral part of the modern Chinese project of cultural engagement with the West. 

No consensus has been achieved on when literary modernism began in Hong Kong. Some critics trace the beginning of Hong Kong modernism to the 1950s, while others argue that its roots lie further back. While it is difficult to determine beginning of Hong Kong modernism with precision, it is an indisputable fact that the publication of Wenyi Xinchao [Literary New Wave] in the 1950s by Ma Lang (a.k.a. Ma Boliang), who served as a poet-cum-editor of the magazine, was crucial for the later development of Hong Kong modernism. The relationship between the magazine and modernism has been the focal point for much discussion since then. However, to what extent did the magazine devote to promoting modernism is controversial. For example, while Ma Lang claimed that the magazine was meant to advocate modernism in Hong Kong in the 1950s, a major and regular contributor to the magazine, Lee Wai-Ling, thought otherwise. In the seventh issue of the magazine, Lee remarks that whether the much-used term “modernism” should be considered a catch-all term is still a question that has yet to be answered. Despite the fact that no consensus has been reached about the relationship between the magazine and modernism, it is a common belief that the magazine has had a potent influence on the later development of Hong Kong modernism. Therefore, rather than following along with the current discussion, this proposed project will focus on the following question: What are the elements of modernism to be found in the magazine? Among previous studies it should be noted that only a few have actually investigated the characteristics of modernism. In addition, the recent development of Western modernist discourse has not been taken into account. This project aims to bridge this research gap by examining all fifteen issues of the magazine. Two distinctive features of Hong Kong modernism observed in the magazine will be discussed in detail. This study argues that the transformative political stance of the magazine, from nationalism to localism over the years, and its localized Chinese lyrical tradition are in fact a progressive and future-oriented force in the development of Hong Kong modernism. Upon reconsidering the characteristics of modernism found in the magazine, this project will help conceptualize the distinctive features of early Hong Kong modernism.

Representation is a key concept to cultural studies. Who can be on TV? Do they represent diversity or stereotypes? Why? What will be the consequences? These are questions of aesthetics and politics. This study aims to write a critical history of representation of Chinese mainlanders in Hong Kong TV dramas (HDs, hereafter). From the lazy and imprisoned Ah Chian（阿燦, 《網中人》1979）, to the well-educated and conniving Tian Mi (田蜜, 《不懂撒嬌的女人》2017), mainlander images have become more and more complicated, contingent, and contradictory. This representation has a symbolic power that has contributed to the public imaginations and to practices of Mainland-Hong Kong relations, as well as the Hong Kong identity. Ma (1999) and Gunn (2006) have found a dualism in several pre-1997 HDs: barbarian/civilized, other/us, mainlander/HongKonger, which contributes to constructing a Hong Kong identity. They are illuminating because this dualism continues to appear in post-1997 HDs; but they have not criticized the dark side of it: discrimination and symbolic violence. 

The refugee crisis of the 21st century is one of the most challenging the globe has faced; today more than an estimated 68 million people are displaced from their homes. Postcolonial and diaspora studies have been slow to respond to the need to reconceptualize theories of migration in the context of the new age of migration. The traditional articulations of diasporic identity formation are lacking in theorizing refugee identities characterized by statelessness, violence and precarity. The kinds of transnational affiliations that foster diasporic identity formations are often absent in the case of refugees on the move as are the engendering of hybrid and cosmopolitan identities so celebrated in diaspora studies

Internationalisation is gaining in popularity in higher education. Bilingual programmes where a second language is used as the medium of instruction have thus become increasingly popular. Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) with both content and language having an integrated curricular role is one such programme. There has been fruitful research on CLIL in various contexts in primary and secondary education. However, how to integrate target language support (eg English) with content teaching at university has not featured prominently in research literature. The study will investigate the impact of CLIL on university students’ content and language development in English-medium nursing education. The CLIL pedagogy in the study will draw upon recent theoretical development of translanguaging and trans-semiotising. Results of the study will inform bilingual university education, nursing education and theory and practice of translanguaging and trans-semiotising.

Su Shi is arguably one of imperial China’s most prominent drivers of the trend of amalgamating literature, art and religion, where his contributions have a special place in the history of the wider Sinosphere. Su was demoted and sent into exile in Huangzhou, and it can be argued that during this low period, his attempt to seek solace in tathāgatagarbha thought had a substantial impact on his literary and artistic works. But this Buddhist influence on Su’s compositions has been not sufficiently discussed among the many Song and Qing dynasty periods Chinese criticisms of his work, perhaps in part due to their authors’ strong affiliations with Confucianism. A different perspective of these works, however, can be found in a commentary written in Chinese by the poet-monk Banri Shūkyū, who flourished in Japan during the Muromachi period. Banri’s alternative perspective, presented in his Tenka haku (The Brightest of the World), was informed by his training as a Japanese Zen monk, scholar and poet, his exposure to different traditions of exegesis and training in art and literature, and personal experiences that in some ways echoed with those of Su Shi, including Banri’s experiencing regret and dejection at being compelled, when middle-aged, to renounce his vows and return to lay life.

During two prosperous periods in the Qing Dynasty, the Qianlong and Jiaqing, textual research was prevalent, and textual-research poetry became a widely popular art. The trend of writing textual research poetry arose, and such a trend was sustained for about one hundred years. This kind of poem was based on the textual-research of various cultural relics, which emphasized the selection of materials. Such poems were mostly written in ancient poetry or song style. Scholars of poetry history and criticism often criticized this act of "academic-stuffed poetry," believing that it damaged the image and lyrical characteristics of poetry. Such acts of treating poetry had always been rejected, and such rejection worried those who practised it in such a way that it eventually disappeared in the history of poetry. However, for such a kind of poetry that can flourish for a hundred years, it must have been sustained by various conditions. The grand narrative of poetry history alone cannot reflect its real value. After all, textual-research poetry was considered as cross-genre (Li-E and Hang Shi-jun of Zhejiang school, Weng Fang-gang of Jili school, Yuan Mei and Yang Fang-can of Xingling school), cross-regional (Beijing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, etc.), cross-class (famous officials such as Wang Chang and Ji Yun, scholars such as Gui Fu and Huang Yi, commoner writers such as Huang Jingren, etc.). The poetry was widely known and distributed. Moreover, textual-research poetry appeared in the Qian-Jia period when the material culture was vibrant, where different "things/objects" contained different meanings in textual-research poems and literary circles. Aimed at examining the relationship between objects, humans, and literature, a new understanding of the value of poetry produced in the Qing Dynasty will become apparent after various research perspectives with specific case studies in this proposed study are completed.

Two problems have remained unresolved in speech prosody research. The first one is that there are numerous rival theories that have coexisted for decades -- supporters for one do not necessarily understand the others well. The second one is that in the absence of a universally accepted framework, field linguists working with a new language could propose prosodic analyses not otherwise satisfactory to fellow researchers, in part also due to field-related practical challenges compared with lab settings. Computational modelling can be a useful tool for addressing these problems. This project seeks to promote computational modeling of fundamental frequency as a tool for (i) theory comparison and (ii) hypothesis testing and analysis *for field linguists*. Here we specifically target linguists without background in computer science or statistics.

Writing from sources is an important academic literacy skill essential for university students to succeed in academia. Nonetheless, because it involves a set of complex cognitive, metacognitive, and self-regulatory processes and strategies, it is extremely challenging. Existing research primarily focused on the cognitive processes of sourcebased writing, adopting qualitative and case-study based methods. While the research generated a nuanced understanding of the intricate mental struggles and issues during the reading-to-write process, it did not investigate the contextual and behavioural aspects of the process, such as the regulation of time, environment and motivation. There is also a paucity of research adopting quantitative means to connect important antecedent, process and outcome variables to generate a comprehensive picture with sufficient clarify to guide practice and further research. The proposed study will attempt to address the above gaps in the literature.

The shakuhachi (尺八), a bamboo flute now considered one of Japan’s representative instruments, came from China in its primitive form in the 8th century (Malm, 2000; Wade, 2005). The Chinese original called the chiba (尺八) has almost disappeared in its birth place, even though other vertical flutes, such as the xiao with a closed mouthpiece and the dong xiao (nan xiao) with a notched mouthpiece, are still popular there (Thrasher, 2008). In the last decade, however, there has been a “revival” of the shakuhachi in China, and an increasing number of Chinese shakuhachi players, teachers, and instrument makers actively offer lessons and concerts. The International Shakuhachi Festival is a quadrennial event that has previously been held in New York, Boulder, Sydney, Kyoto, and London. The next will be in Chaozhou in 2022. Underlying the newly emerging popularity of the shakuhachi in China is a shared narrative among Chinese practitioners: Originating in the Tang dynasty, the shakuhachi has finally returned to its birthplace and is regaining its authenticity as a Chinese instrument. With a sense of nostalgia for the past and responsibility for the future, leading Chinese shakuhachi players are promoting the shakuhachi as a Chinese instrument. The shakuhachi is widely practiced and appreciated outside Japan (Keister, 2004; Matsunobu, 2011; Strothers, 2010). The presence of non-Japanese practitioners is evident in today’s thriving international shakuhachi scene (Smith, 2008). With an expansion of international adherents and the rise of multilingual spaces, the shakuhachi has seen changing boundaries of membership and changing notions of musical identity and musical ownership (Matsunobu, 2009). Previous studies on the internationalization of the shakuhachi have focused predominantly on Westerners’ take up of shakuhachi music and their inclination towards individualized, decontextualized approaches to shakuhachi music (Keister, 2004; Matsunobu, 2009, 2011, 2013). However, little is known about Chinese approaches to shakuhachi music. Compared to Western practitioners, Chinese shakuhachi practitioners have a strong sense of musical identity rooted in Chinese culture. This ethnomusicological study, based on the author’s previous studies of the lived experiences of shakuhachi practitioners in Japan and North America (Matsunobu, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015), aims to elucidate how the shakuhachi and its music are being taken up, localized, and appropriated in the Chinese context.

A growing body of literature has discovered that the potential of feedback to enhance learning rests upon student feedback literacy. Despite being acknowledged as significant, empirical research on student feedback literacy, especially in L2 writing, is underexplored. Adopting a case study design spanning one academic year, the present study seeks to examine elementary students’ development of student feedback literacy through the use of writing portfolios; how, and to what extent such development of student feedback literacy may influence text revisions and writing improvement; and what the factors are that influence the development of student feedback literacy. The study will contribute to the limited literature on the development of student feedback literacy with the potential to offer pedagogical implications for enhancing students’ feedback literacy, which in turn will encourage greater learner agency and improvement in writing. 

Engaging students in art criticism and art making activities is the major work of visual arts teachers. With access to the free online resources provided by art museum websites and image-based electronic databases, teachers are now in a better position to make use of artworks in planning and delivering their curriculum. The following questions arise: Can art teachers assume the role of art museum curators and construct an online exhibition to facilitate student learning? How should teachers be prepared to adopt such a ‘teacher-curator’ pedagogy? Can the thematic approach and presentation of exhibitions broaden students’ horizons in considering artworks? Will learning through virtual exhibitions increase students’ motivation to learn and improve their skills in using online resources? What will be the effectiveness and impact of this way of conceptualising, organising and constructing visual arts learning opportunities? The aim of the proposed study is to answer the above questions using a design-based research. Three primary and three secondary school teachers and their students (about 165) will be invited to participate. The first phase of the study will focus on the training of teacher participants in the teacher-curator pedagogy. The second phase is the implementation stage. With the support of the investigator, the teacher participants will develop two virtual exhibitions and relevant face-to-face, museum visit and online learning activities. The third phase is the evaluation stage. Data on the impact and effectiveness of the teacher-curator pedagogy will be collected through student and teacher questionnaires and interviews. The study will be conducted in the particular cultural context of Hong Kong. Museum+, the new museum of visual culture, is scheduled to open in 2020, and the renovated Hong Kong Museum of Art will re-open in late 2019. Besides having state-of-the-art facilities, we would like to see members of our society become regular museum visitors and be culturally literate. By actively using artworks from museums to teach, the study will help to build up a critical audience for the cultural establishments in Hong Kong in the long term. Through the formulation of exhibition themes, the selection of connected artworks and the design of relevant learning activities, the study will enhance the autonomy and capacity of teachers. With a focus on using digital technology, the results of the study will contribute to developing an effective pedagogical practice in general and one that promotes online learning in visual arts in particular.

During a panel on comparative literature at the Association for Asian Studies in 1971, Chen Shih-hsiang said that the “Chinese literary tradition as a whole is a lyrical tradition,” offering another perspective for interpreting the tradition. The Chinese lyrical tradition emphasizes expressing deep feelings (or embodying lyricism) in various art forms. Chen’s provocative pronouncement initiated debate within research communities in Greater China. Due to its unique historical background, Hong Kong’s lyrical works, which are different from those of mainland China and Taiwan, have not received the attention they deserve from academia. 

Using a cross-lagged panel design, this study investigates the concurrent and prospective effect of strategy use on CCW performance through two groups of adolescent L2 beginners: 150 non-Chinese ethnic students from local schools in Hong Kong (CSL learners) and 150 students from Vietnam (CFL learners). Quantitative (including descriptive statistics, multiple regression and structural equation modelling) and qualitative analyses are conducted on two sets of longitudinal data, in order to: (i) evaluate the significant effectiveness of strategy use on CCW performance among CSL and CFL students concurrently and overtime; (ii) examine whether the bidirectional relationship of strategy use and CCW performance vary between CSL and CFL; and (iii) depict how context affects the relationship of learning strategies and CCW development among L2 learners. 
This study promises discoveries of significant theoretical and practical potential. It expands the scope of research on skill-specific learning strategies, and connects individual differences and learning settings to explore the underlying factors affecting the CCW component of literacy acquisition. Since effective learning strategies can be taught explicitly, the results of this study have important pedagogical implications in increasing learner autonomy and overcoming the learning difficulties of Chinese L2 learners globally.

From Qingli to Xiling and Yuanfeng (1041-1085), the political and literary reforms happened almost simultaneously. How to explain this phenomenon? The most prominent Wenren of Northern Song were not only literary figures, but also thought leaders of that time. In an era of changes, how did they pass on Siwen through a more comprehensive form of Wen based on their philosophies and set a model for the world? In response to these questions, this research is aims to probe the connections between ‘Wen-Dao’, ‘imperial edicts’, and ‘etiquette’ in the Northern Song Dynasty.

In Hong Kong, multilingualism is prevalent, where citizens have Cantonese as their first language (L1), Mandarin and English as their second (L2) or third language (L3). Previous studies pointed out that the language acquisition of a multilingual is nonlinear and dynamic (Jessner, 2008), and L3 speakers possess a greater repertoire than L2 speakers in terms of cognitive flexibility, phonetic-phonological articulatory, perceptual knowledge and language-learning awareness that helps L3 learners better acquire a new language (Gut, 2009). Regarding the complexity of language teaching and acquisition, this project aims to examine the interaction amongst L1, L2, and L3 and provide in-depth insights for language teachers and learners in Hong Kong and researchers worldwide.

Most research of early Chinese glass has focused on the issues of origin and considered this medium primarily as an evidence of China’s contacts with outside civilisations. This research, on the contrary, will explore the subject of glass in "Chinese form", which is generally agreed was locally manufactured. Because of the ostensive resemblance, many glass objects unearthed in Han burial sites have been confused with stone or ceramic materials, and some even have been mistaken for jade in archaeological reports. Therefore, this project will first cautiously investigate the feature descriptions and documentation of the relevant items in the reports and conduct firsthand study of the objects. A rigorous re-examination of the information will bring the glass pieces that have been disregarded and excluded in previous studies into the research. Because of its similarity to jade, glass had been generally perceived as a less precious substitute material for jade in ancient China. But judging by recently discovered glass pieces, the use of glass during the Han period, particularly in burials, was not that simple and did not necessarily follow that logic. By relying on archaeological material and reports of scientific analyses, and adopting the interdisciplinary approach of art historical stylistic analyses and contextual material studies, this research will address the importance of glass in Han burial rituals. It may illuminate the role of glass in contemporaneous perceptions of immortality, and will review the hierarchy of material in the ritual context.

At the turn of the twentieth century technologies and media of sound recording entered music classrooms and became an integral part of music learning. What then existed was often called “the teaching of singing,” classrooms where students sung along to teacher- played piano accompaniment. What emerged was “music appreciation”—as teachers used recordings to teach great works like literature, shared music from distant places, and a variety of other ways to teach about music. Building on work in the field of sound studies, the present proposal will provide an historical account of the creation and emergence of music appreciation as pedagogy built around media of sound recording from approximately 1900-1950. This study addresses the understanding of how music learning is connected to various media of sound recording in ways that impact what is taught and how it is taught, working within theoretical approaches from the field of sound studies (Pinch & Bijsterveld, 2012; Sterne, 2012a). Sound studies is a newly emerged interdisciplinary approach to the study of sound in human contexts, typically combining disciplines such as history, philosophy, and science and technology studies. In particular, this study characterizes media not only as the gadgets, but as larger mediated networks of recurring relations between people, practices, institutions, and technologies that come to be understood as a medium through recurrent patterns of usage. For instance, the actual medium of radio is a network that includes producers, artists, technicians, broadcast standards, advertisers, and so on. Because the radio medium involves these various aspects, media theorists note plasticity as the medium evolves, and especially as a medium first emerges, just as radio now includes satellite and various connections through the internet. This project is comprised a set of case studies, each of which examines the ways that various media of sound recording were incorporated into the teaching and learning of music. Following previous research, particular attention will be paid to the emergence of specific pedagogic approaches that emerged in concert with media of sound recording. The cases will combine historical data, changing pedagogic practices, along with theoretical implications to establish the recurring patterns and interactions between people, practices, institutions and technologies as wants, needs, values and practices adapted to sound recordings. Cases will include changes to textbooks, the Music Memory competitions in the USA, and the NBC Music Appreciation Hour, along with the connections to the larger network of media and technology.

In the years surrounding the second World War from the 1930s-50s, numerous new theatres opened in different districts across Hong Kong including Majestic Theatre (1928 in Jordan), Cathay Theatre (1939 in Wanchai), Capitol Theatre (1952 in Causeway Bay), etc. These buildings indicated a flourishing of entertainment businesses in Hong Kong and the high demand of this form of leisure from the local society. Interestingly, most of these theatre buildings were built in the Art Deco architectural style. Most of these theatres are now demolished or abandoned, but a socio-history of entertainment and theatre buildings in Hong Kong are missing in academia and there is a need of repositioning in the field. This research argues that Art Deco, a modern architectural style, can be understood as a form of entertainment and demonstration of resistance of the colonized in early twentieth century Hong Kong. The study also aims at demonstrating that these theatre buildings are not passive objects, but rather subjects that are able to consume the dominating culture to ‘self-fashion’ and ‘self-represent’, in using postcolonial theoretical terms. Previous research has been done on Chinese cinema operators and cinema business in Hong Kong in the early twentieth century, but little research has been conducted to link the architecture or socio-cultural landscape of Hong Kong cinema to postcolonial theories. This project will envision a three-tiered impact. First, the research will reveal the ways in which the patron, architect and the audience of the theatre buildings interacted with each other in laying the foundation of modern cinema and public entertainment history in Hong Kong. Second, based on archival research and visual ethnography, the research will adopt postcolonial theory to analyse and problematize the architectures, and investigate the ways that they ‘self-fashion’ and ‘self-represent’ different identities. Third, on top of formulating a database on Art Deco theatres, the research will propose ways of strengthening the conservation policy for the remaining few surviving Art Deco theatres in Hong Kong. The project will ultimately examine the reach of Art Deco into everyday life of Hong Kong in the form of architecture and cinema, critique the dynamics between the dominated-subjugated in colonial Hong Kong, and offer a new way to conserve architectural heritage through emphasizing its aesthetic and socio-cultural implications.

Effective learning of second language (L2) vocabulary hinges on the learners’ ability to self-regulate their learning. However, little research interest has been shown in how students self-regulate when they are left on their own to explore L2 vocabulary learning mediated by mobile technologies. In this research, a self-regulated and personalised (SRP) vocabulary learning approach is developed and its effectiveness measured. This research aims to help students develop a heightened capacity for self-regulation to learn L2 vocabulary with mobile technologies more efficiently and effectively. This research adopts a mixed-method design. An experimental design is adopted to find out to what extent students can learn L2 vocabulary using the SRP approach in a mobile technology-mediated environment via a self-directed intervention for one semester. In addition, a multi-case study will be conducted to provide qualitative evidence to verify whether the self-directed SRP approach can lead to a heightened capacity for self-regulation.

English is stress-timed while Chinese is syllable-timed, which makes English word stress placement difficult for Chinese learners of English. This project aims to develop assessment tasks to identify Chinese learners’ difficulties in English word stress placement in perception and production, design training programmes to examine whether word stress can be acquired systematically, and conduct a teaching experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of the training programmes in facilitating the learning of word stress. This project will generate substantial impact in both theory and practice.

Since the return of Hong Kong’s sovereignty to China in 1997, Cantonese opera has been included in the SAR's school music curriculum. Recently, the People’s Government of Guangdong Province (2017) issued an ordinance to promote the transmission of the traditional music genre through all channels, including school education. Cantonese opera has been officially included in the policy agenda of both Hong Kong and mainland China, to preserve it and to promote cultural education in schools. Hong Kong people have been facing a challenge of identities. The initiative to develop Moral and National Education as compulsory subjects in schools in 2012 was opposed by younger generations. This was one of the reasons for the protest event “Occupy Central”. At present in the Hong Kong community, there appears to be conflict between younger generations striving for their “Hongkongese” identity, and another group that embraces and defends their Chinese national identity. A broad-based concept of national education has been proposed, which is a comprehensive model that should include national, political, social and cultural identity. As Cantonese opera is an art form replete with Chinese cultural elements, and thus suitable for promoting Chinese cultural identity, this study aims: 1) to investigate the current state regarding teaching and learning Cantonese opera in the schools of Hong Kong and Guangzhou, 2) to examine the extent to which variables such as teachers’ musical preference and teacher education in Hong Kong and Guangzhou may contribute to the teaching of Cantonese opera in music classes; and 3) to examine the extent to which learning Cantonese opera in schools may contribute to the development of Chinese cultural identity in students. Based on the Social Identity Theory, this study is in two phases employing a sequential explanatory mixed-method design. Phase I will be a questionnaire survey to investigate the current ways in which Cantonese opera is taught in schools. A hardcopy/online questionnaire will be designed and disseminated to all primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong and Guangzhou for music teachers. Phase II is a multiple-case study in which eight schools from both cities will be involved. Researchers will observe the classes over three months in each school and interview teachers and students for feedback and reflection on students’ development of Chinese cultural identity. This study will reflect the current situation in terms of teaching and learning of the genre, which will provide insights for future development.

This project seeks to investigate how student teachers are prepared to teach CT in a pre-service language teacher education programme in Hong Kong. Adopting an ethnographic case study design and informed by an ecological perspective on teacher education, the project will explore how student teachers learn to teach CT in relation to their programme coverage, coherence and applicability. The project will also draw on multiple perspectives from language teacher educators and programme leaders/coordinators to discover how CT is integrated with their situated teacher education curricula. Such an ethnographic design not only can contribute to our understanding of CT, but can also generate insights into the dynamic, complex process of teacher learning across different sites, influenced by a range of institutional and socio-cultural factors.

This project responds to the need for research into the teaching of English to young learners (TEYL), defined as children between the ages of 5-12. Despite the significant increase in popularity of TEYL globally, including mainland China, our knowledge of how TEYL is implemented, the attitudes of teachers, and the challenges they face is scant. This project, therefore, addresses this gap in our understanding of English language teaching and learning by exploring the experiences of one group of primary school English teachers in mainland China. A particular contribution of this project is to examine the experiences and perceptions of teachers of English to young learners using the theoretical lens of teacher identity. The results of this project will be of interest to policy makers, teacher educators, school authorities, researchers, and teachers of young learners themselves, both in mainland China and analogous educational settings worldwide.

This oral history project aims to document the voices of Hong Kong leftist film workers who were active from 1949 to 1966 and to utilize their voices to reconstruct Cold War Hong Kong history. The principal investigator adopts the common usage of the term “leftist” during this era, defining leftist film workers as those who worked for the three major leftist film studios and the sole distributor of films made in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Until the mid-1960s, leftists controlled a significant share of the Hong Kong film market, produced popular movies and exported their productions and PRC-made films to other Chinese communities

This study aims to investigate the cognitive factors of word reading in CSL and native Chinese-speaking learners.

There is a gap between the traditional art education model and the needs of contemporary society. The main content of Discipline-based Art Education (DBAE), developed by art educators in the 1980s-90s, has been adopted by the Hong Kong Education Bureau since 1996. The aim of DBAE is to educate students to become an elite in high/fine arts. However, the assumptions in DBAE about art education fail to justify the use of a modernist paradigm for teaching and learning art in the postmodern era. Art educators criticize DBAE’s monotype mode of teaching for producing students who do not have the ability to think critically. Since DBAE celebrates only modern art and culture, it fails to fulfill the needs produced by the rapid changes that take place in contemporary society and in the students’ social lives. It cannot cultivate the higher order thinking or visual literacy skills that students require to appreciate and interpret artworks, and to create meaning about society and themselves. As a new model for art education, art educators claim that Visual Culture Art Education (VCAE) facilitates students’ critical thinking skills and creativity related to their daily, postmodern lives. It critically reflects the complexity of the relationships between students’ social lives, everyday life experiences and the visual images they encounter. The aim of VCAE is to nourish critical, reflective and creative thinking skills to prepare the new generation with the level of visual literacy they need for the 21st century. In the long run, VCAE can provide an educational method that nourishes students’ critical and interpretive abilities to suit the needs of Hong Kong culture. However, we do not know how effective VCAE is and teachers do not know how to use VCAE to teach. A VCAE model is necessary for knowledge transfer, but one has not yet been established. By developing such a model the proposed study will bridge the gap between theory and practice. It will also help to bridge the gaps between students’ learning, their everyday socio-cultural life and the real world. This study will adopt a design-based research methodology, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, to examine the effectiveness of VCAE and to identify its teaching and learning approaches. Data collection and evaluation methods include pre-test, post-test and delayed post-test evaluations of students’ portfolios, observations, interviews with teachers and students and document analysis. Senior high schools, teachers and their students will be involved in the study.

This project investigates literary fields of Taiwan and Hong Kong in the 1960s. In 1967, Lin Haiyin founded Chun Wenxue literary journal in Taiwan. In the same year, its Hong Kong version was published by Wang Jingxi .Wang also introduced Wen Xing Cong Kan series from Taiwan via his Wen Yi Bookstore. It was owing to Hong Kong version of Wen Xing Cong Kan that Hong Kong readers could get a glimpse of the works of Yin Haiguang, Li Ao, Bo Yang, whose once banned works were difficult to access even in Taiwan.

On the other hand, his poor management led to accusation of not paying royalties to the authors and infringements of copyrights. What Wang created from the mid-1960s to 70s was a complicated case regarding cultural publishing. This project aims to investigate the significance of Wang Jingxi in the dissemination of literature across Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The project regards “written languages” as a combined perspective from Joseph Yau and City Magazine. Through the study of this important local writer and the development of City in 1970s and 80s, it aims to examine the complicated interrelation between written languages and identities and investigate the process of local identity building. We would like to advocate the inclusiveness and open-mindedness of “localness” in Yau and City. It is true that this project places a strong focus on local literature, history and culture. As we know that international approach is very critical in success of our research, we will place Yau and City in the whole picture of international politics and western cultures which are highly influential to Hong Kong during the period concerned.

Art museums are places where students learn from original artworks. Previous scholarship on museum education has placed the emphasis either on visitors’ experiences or on outcomes of learning gained from museum visits. There is a lack of empirical research into group dialogue – the most used education strategy in museums and the most basic component of teaching in classrooms. The proposed study will investigate the group dialogues conducted by teachers with students in museums and classrooms. Three modes of dialogue proposed by Hubard (2015) – predetermined, thematic and open – will be tested with primary school teachers and students. ‘Design-based research’, a method to identify improvements systematically from experiments in learning situations, will be the methodology employed. The study will be conducted in three phases. Phase 1 will involve the preparation of teacher participants for leading group dialogues and curriculum plan development. Ten teachers and about 270 sixth-grade students (age 12) from different primary schools will be invited to participate in the study. Five workshops on effective group dialogue strategy will be conducted for the teacher participants. They will develop two five- to six-week curriculum plans with each incorporating one museum visit. Phase 2 will focus on the implementation of the plans with the support of the investigators and the evaluation of teachers’ and students’ performance in the group dialogue. Data will be obtained from the teachers’ reflections, interviews, observations and video recordings of museum visits and classroom teaching before, during and after the implementation of the plans. Phase 3 will be the data analysis stage. Taking the Hong Kong context into consideration, the results of the study will be used to create a pedagogical model that is theoretically and practically sound. The study is particularly meaningful given the increased emphasis that has been placed on learning art criticism in the new Education Bureau Visual Arts (VA) curriculums. In the revised VA curriculum for primary one to secondary three levels, it is explicitly stated that art making should be learned in connection with art criticism. The study will also be a timely response to the development of the West Kowloon Cultural District. In 2019, the Museum+ will be launched and the Hong Kong Museum of Art will be re-opened after renovation. There will be numerous opportunities for students and members of the public to visit these purpose-built museums. In this connection, an educated audience and refined museum practices are much needed.

This project analyses the Polish community of Harbin from its beginnings in the 1890s to its end in the 1940s by focusing on institutions and practices of Polish schooling in that city.

In the ITE4 document (2014), the fourth strategy on information technology in education proposed a new ‘e-learning policy’ to unleash the learning power of students. In the field of music education, the use of ICT in music composition has been studied since 2000. From the framework of Webster's (2003) model of creative thinking, the connection between music composition and creativity has been established. In 2013, Webster claimed that musical intelligence that involves composition is intimately connected to the model of creative thinking in music. He suggests two reasons why compositional thinking by students is vitally important. One is to increase musical intelligence and the other is to increase the likelihood of creative achievement. The definition of music composition intelligence is that students have a natural capacity for thinking in sound for compositional purposes and this capacity is not just a talent for ‘gifted’ individuals but a natural part of what might be considered musical intelligence that is present to some extent in all. However, no empirical study has been conducted to support music composition intelligence. To extend my doctoral study, the research objective is to examine how secondary students demonstrate their innate abilities in using computers to compose by observing their compositional approaches under the musical intelligence (MI) of Gardner’s framework (2006) and compositional thinking within Webster’s model of creative thinking (2003) in order to validate their compositional intelligence. To further investigate the compositional intelligence in secondary students aged from 12 (F.1) to 15 (F.4) during their computer-assisted compositional process at a band one secondary school, this empirical research is a one-year study to capture their compositional process through collecting quantitative data (file analysis) and qualitative data (reflective journals, focus group interviews and video observations). A songwriting project for F.1 students and a classical composition project for F.4 students will be taught. The ICT music curriculum will be framed into 12 weeks with a prescriptive task in the first semester and a free task in the second semester. Digital composition files and reflective journals are collected each week. During the digital file analysis, different compositional approaches in popular and classical music are observed. From the reflective journal, different stages of students’ compositional behaviours are mapped under the framework of Webster (2003). Therefore, students’ compositional approaches and compositional thinking are revealed, from popular music to classical music, and open-end to closed-end tasks, in a proposed model of music composition intelligence.

This project will investigate the experiences of eight English language teachers in Hong Kong during their initial years of full-time teaching.

The objective of this research project is to empirically investigate how non-literary translation practitioners and translation clients perceive translator professionalism, which is understood as not only involving knowledge and expertise but also the virtues of trustworthiness and altruism.

Literature and photography are often regarded as sister arts, their cominglings latent in the very etymology of the word “photography” meaning “writing with light.” While many scholars have studied their productive interactions, there is scant scholarly work about the use of photography as a trope or metaphor in literary texts. This project aims to shift the scholarship from an intense focus on text-image relations to the presence and function of verbalized or narrated images in literary texts. Some scholars have propounded the textuality of images by viewing images as texts that can be read and deciphered (Mitchell 1995, Petit 2006), but none have analysed the narrated image in literature.

本計劃試圖從現代中國文學研究史的角度入手，全面整理陳寅恪有關文學的論述，闡明他的文學觀念，並且深入辨析他的研究方法與前人的異同。

The object of this project is the poetic treatments of everyday modernity in 1970s Hong Kong, but not restricted to the four basic necessities "yishizhuxing" (衣食住行).

This proposed study will examine the development of Cantonese narrative in ethnic minority children of Hong Kong with special focus on three sub-groups, namely, Indian, Pakistani, and Nepalese, who are commonly called South Asians.

A review of the current literature on developing students’ critical response to visual arts reveals a heavy reliance on using art criticism models in schools. The learning of art criticism is generally seen as an engagement of students in various language tasks, such as describing, analysing, interpreting and evaluating. Geahigan (2002) disagrees with the view that the learning of art criticism is a discursive practice and conceptualises it as a process of inquiry. Building on the theory of Geahigan, the present study aims to develop, field-test and evaluate an inquiry-based model for learning art criticism. Using ‘design research’, a systematic and rigorous method of seeking out tested improvements in learning situations, as the principal methodology, the study will develop and test a pedagogic model that will enhance students’ critical ability in art criticism. The study will be conducted in three phases. Phase 1 will involve the preparation of eight teacher participants in the understanding of various art criticism models and the development of inquiry-based art criticism curriculum plans. Phase 2 will focus on the implementation of the curriculum plans. The investigators will observe three to five lessons and advise on the refinement of the plans. In Phase 3 the effectiveness and outcomes of the inquiry-based art criticism teaching on students will be investigated. Data will be obtained from interviews of teacher participants, classroom observations, video-recorded lessons, and the pre-testing and post-testing of student performance in written texts of art criticism. The data collected will be examined in relation to current theories on learning art criticism, and used to develop a pedagogical model which is theoretically and practically sound, taking into consideration the Hong Kong context. Addressing the gap between the theorisation, development, and implementation of inquiry-based art criticism learning, the project is important at this time, when the Senior Secondary Curriculum and the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination are being launched. Both the new curriculum and the examination place a strong emphasis on art appreciation, criticism and inquiry. The development of a critical audience has also become particularly important since the first phase of the West Kowloon Cultural District project will be coming to realisation as early as 2015. The study will represent a timely effort to answer many of the questions raised by the community, schools, teachers and students about the development of the critical ability of our next generation.

This project will use the main corpus of Leung’s works as examples to demonstrate how he brings these apparently disparate but actually connected topics under the umbrella of Hong Kong modernism and helps to enrich the meaning of the literary movement.

Traditionally, Cantonese opera artists strived to develop individual unique artistic style. Since the mid-20th Century, various artists have successfully established their own personal style recognized by the audience. Nowadays there is anecdotal evidence that some practicing artists are hesitant in developing their own style but are imitating the performance styles of established virtuosi. In what ways the artists’ conceptions of creativity have changed over time and why today’s audience seem to have accepted or even come to appreciate this shift have not been investigated. While creativity is regarded as one of the most important generic competences in the West, the notion of creativity in relation to oriental traditional arts, such as Cantonese opera has been a neglected research area. This proposed research project will be significant in addressing three critical issues that impact on the future development of Cantonese opera: (1) the nature of creativity demonstrated by eminent artists in the 20th century; (2) the extent to which the conceptions of creativity in Cantonese opera have changed from the perspectives of practicing artists and learners; (3) how artistic creativity can be re-valued by the profession and audience. The study will be undertaken in three phases. Phase 1 involves a musical analysis of selected audio-video recordings by different artists with a focus of similarity and differences in personal interpretation. Through an ethnographic study at two local Cantonese opera institutions, Phase 2 aims to investigate how the socio-cultural contexts in Hong Kong affect the development of Cantonese opera. Through observation of classes and interviews with stakeholders, an updated understanding can be obtained. Phase 3 aims to solicit the perspectives of current practicing artists, connoisseurs and beginners on their views of creativity in Cantonese opera. A mixed method with both qualitative and quantitative tools will be employed, including a questionnaire survey of the groups, and in-depth interviews with voluntary respondents. This study will document and provide evidence to account for the development of artistic creativity in Cantonese opera. It will reveal the particular characteristics of creativity in the genre and the extent to which conceptions of creativity held by both artists and patrons are influenced by socio-cultural contexts. The findings will enrich the current understanding of Chinese creativity as applied to Cantonese opera, and serve as a useful reference for developing and implementing programmes for general education and training of future artists, as well as stimulating current artists in the pursuit of creativity.

This study aims to re-evaluate Lady Gregory and her writings. Also, the research aims at helping clarify the nature of female writing and justify Lady Gregory’s contribution to modern Irish literature.

本項目計劃研究漢語代詞的歷史發展與印度佛教，主要是佛經翻譯的關係，是申請者已經結束的 GRF 項目 “漢譯佛經梵漢對比分析語料庫建設及其漢語歷史語言學研究” 工作的繼續。

This project aims to carry out a more complete inquiry into trilingual education in Hong Kong primary schools. The research questions are: 1. What are the models of trilingual education in HK primary schools? 2. Which models are more effective in fostering trilingualism?

This project aims to examine the method and methodology of philology and philosophy, and to search for the possibility of merging these two approaches in order to apply them to the study of newly excavated Chinese silk manuscripts and bamboo slips in light of early Chinese intellectual history.

本計劃以出土文獻，例如：清華簡和兩周青銅器銘文材料，輔以《尚書》等傳世文獻，重新研究《逸周書》這部著作。透過出土文獻，例如清華簡《皇門》和《逸周書.皇門解》的校讀，嘗試還原古本的某些原貌；并由其各篇所反映的具體內容、思想和語言現象，重新研究《逸周書》各篇的著作時代。希望找到一些帶有時代標記的語言、思想、文化等標準特徵。進而重塑上古漢語前段的資料。

針對現有研究的不足，本計劃試圖全面考察蔡元培的索隱紅學，闡明此一研究範式的學術觀念和操作方法，並且重新檢討其有別於新紅學的本質特徵。

Cantonese opera is facing a crisis of transmission. Traditionally, Cantonese opera employs oral tradition in transmitting their artistry to the new generation. Learning occurs in a master-apprentice relationship, wherein apprentices serve as followers of the master to develop personal artistry through informal tuition. Apart from artistry, the apprentice will learn about the socio-cultural context of the genre through long-term immersion during the apprenticeship. In recent decades, training artists for the profession has been influenced by the Western conservatory tradition. Different aspects of the genre are taught by different specialists during a limited length of time. Learning is limited to knowledge and skills instead of socio-cultural practices and creativity in artistry, which take time and a specific context to learn. Teaching Cantonese opera in Hong Kong schools has been encouraged to promote the Chinese culture. However, major problems include the lack of systematic pedagogy. Thus, this study addresses the issue of transmission of Cantonese opera in professional training as well as in school education. This 20-month study will adopt a mixed-method approach in three phases. In Phase One, semi-structured interviews will be conducted with five artists with backgrounds in oral tradition and five artists trained in conservatories. Researchers will also undertake research visits to institutions of Cantonese opera in Hong Kong and Guangdong Province to interview teachers and students after class observations and seek their views on the characteristics of their training programs. The findings will help in formulating pedagogy models of oral and conservatory traditions to provide a theoretical framework for the next phase. Phase Two will be a multi-case study that investigates the teaching effectiveness of tutors with both pedagogy models in two primary and two secondary schools with Cantonese opera programs. The researchers will observe the classes, collect program documents, and interview school teachers, Cantonese opera tutors, and students about the pedagogy and learning process. Video recording of the teaching and learning process will be undertaken for repeated observation, analysis, and triangulation with the interviews. A questionnaire on how students perceive the pedagogy will also be administered to all participating students. Based on the findings from previous phases, a new pedagogy model for the teaching and learning of Cantonese opera in nurturing artists from school to professional levels will be developed in Phase Three. The model will shed light on developing a new pedagogy system for nurturing professional artists of Cantonese opera with personal styles and artistic creativity.

“Wig: The Global History of a Cold War Commodity, 1958-1979,” examines Asia’s “miraculous” economic growth under the US Cold War umbrella by tracing the “life” of a strange commodity: the human-hair and synthetic-fiber wig. In the 1960s-70s, wigs became a key Cold War commodity in Asia: the #2 export in South Korea, employing over 40,000 people; the #4 export in Hong Kong, employing 30,000; and a state-supported industry in India and Singapore. By the 1970s, when 40% of US women wore wigs or hairpieces, the wig was a US$1 billion global industry, dominated by Asian wigmakers and Korean-American wig retailers. But while no one intended for wigs to fuel Asian industrialization and globalization, the rise of wigs was not an accident. The wig became a Cold War commodity in 1965, when the US extended its 1950 trade embargo against China to include communist “Asiatic” hair – cutting off China’s US$10 million hair trade to punish its escalation of the Vietnam War. This seemingly minor intervention had major consequences: by restricting trade in communist hair, the embargo devastated Hong Kong’s wig industry (which relied on Chinese hair) and jumpstarted South Korea’s industry (since the ROK harvested its own “anti-communist” hair). And as Asian wigmakers scrambled to find new, ideologically acceptable hair sources, they produced a complex map of the Cold War Asia-Pacific: hair was smuggled from China to Hong Kong through Indonesia, and flown from non-aligned India to US-allied South Korea. Wigs thus reveal how Asian export-led industrialization took shape under and beyond US Cold War influence. This project introduces global and interdisciplinary approaches to studying Cold War history. By examining how wigs moved, we understand Asian growth differently: seeing how Asia’s industrialization was shaped not only by Cold War politico-economics but also by ordinary people, from bureaucrats and factory workers to hair peddlers and wig-wearers. The project thus makes a methodological intervention in two growing fields of history, the history of capitalism and global history, by combining “top down” (diplomatic history, political history, economic history) and “bottom up” (social history, labor history, material culture) approaches, producing a thick, transnational approach to global history. “Wig” will yield a book proposal, conference presentations, a journal article, and a complete book draft. To create impact beyond academia, project findings will be used to produce multilingual global history teaching materials, which will be disseminated locally and through a web site for educators around the world.

Redressing Atrocities: Forms of Reconciliation in Postcolonial Southeast Asian Literature This project offers a critical exposition of reconciliation in postcolonial Southeast Asian literature in English. It considers how literary forms are used as a medium to explore reparative possibilities for past and present conflicts in Southeast Asia. How might we read Anglophone Southeast Asian literature and critically frame the apparent lure of reconciliation for postcolonial Southeast Asia? How do these texts register reparative desires in their literary strategies, narrative shapes, and formal structures? What aesthetic, ethical, and epistemological roles do literary imaginations perform in present-day conflict-ridden spaces around the world? Though reconciliation assumes a prominent status in public discourses and transitional justice mechanisms such as Truth and Reconciliation Commissions globally, it has yet to attain sustained discussion in the literary humanities. This is particularly so in postcolonial critical discourses which have often stressed the ethical value of resistance and viewed reconciliation with suspicion. While some postcolonial scholars have begun to examine the complexity of reconciliation in recent years, they have hitherto tended to overlook the remedial potential of English-language Southeast Asian narratives. As a first attempt to address these critical lacunae, this proposed ECS project seeks to reclaim the vocabulary of reconciliation for postcolonial studies and shift the field’s geographical ambit from the dominant sites of Canada, South Africa, Australia to the often neglected Southeast Asia. In particular, the project examines a corpus of Anglophone Southeast Asian literature on four conflicts: Tan Twan Eng’s novel on the Japanese occupation of Malaya, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s short story collection on the war in Vietnam, Vaddey Ratner’s literary memoir on the Cambodian genocide, and the recent poetry on the Rohingya crisis. This proposed project argues that by addressing atrocities and their aftermaths, the selected postcolonial Southeast Asian texts thematically and formally register an ethics of reconciliation. Such literary expressions seek to redress injustices and repair injured communities within and beyond Southeast Asia, despite the acknowledged enormity, if not impossibility, of the task. Contrary to its often reductive representation in governmental policies and legal avenues, reconciliation as articulated in the selected aesthetic forms captures the paradoxes, partiality, and cultural-historical embeddedness of reparative work. All four cases consider the possibility of reconciliation and the countervailing prospect of irreconcilability. Overall, this project demonstrates that Anglophone Southeast Asian literature makes an important contribution to rethinking reconciliation outside bureaucratic and legal-judicial domains.

Renowned for his work on the dictionary Shuowen Jiezi, Qing philologist Zhu Junsheng (1788—1858) is also author of Liushisi Gua Jingjie, a work generally viewed as a repository of existing interpretations without scholarly innovation and thus largely overlooked. However, to gauge its worth simply on the format presented is to conclude on bias rather than evidence. In fact, on top of being transmissive in nature, Zhu’s work is pivotal and innovative in many ways. It is proposed that the following two areas of Jingjie’s significance will be uncovered: (1)While Jingjie does incorporate a wealth of existing interpretations, Zhu would often present an abridged or restructured extraction, to which his own views are provided. Zhu is also keen on making historical references alongside his interpretations. His historiographical acumen reflects mid-Qing intellectual scholarship, invoking new understandings on astronomy and geography to support his theses, which in turn makes a fresh contribution to classical exegesis. The criticism that Jingjie is “with a clear lack of a critical eye” is an imbalanced assessment. Only through thoroughly understanding how Zhu accepts past scholarship and makes transformative innovations can we observe how new life is breathed into the Chinese classics that has seen continued reinvigoration throughout the ages. (2)It is indisputable that Zhu’s Shuowen Tongxun Dingsheng is his philological magnum opus. However, in evaluating the extent of his achievements, scholars often overlook the philological evidence presented in his other works. It must be acknowledged that Shuowen Jiezi is an analytical dictionary and Zhu’s work on it strives to examine each character’s basic (or definitive) meaning. Whereas the goal of Jingjie is interpret Zhou Yi and its philological exegeses serve such a purpose. It is therefore not surprising to see competing glosses between Zhu’s two works. Only through a systematic examination of Zhu’s philological evidence from Jingjie in contrast with that of Shuowen Tongxun Dingsheng can we observe how his preparatory work for the latter has informed the formation of his understanding of Zhou Yi, and more importantly, how Zhu applies his philological expertise in the interpretive and extended meanings of individual characters found in the Chinese classics. The research output would be pioneering in its evaluation of Zhu’s philological and linguistic achievements outside of the singular source thoroughly examined by other scholars.

Twenty years after its 1997 handover back to China Hong Kong remains a unique place on the world’s stage. British colonialism has left many enduring marks on Hong Kong identity as well as on its physical landscape. One of the most peculiar, and controversial, is the legacy of the Small House Policy of the New Territories; an agreement reached between the British and the village leaders after it leased the New Territories in 1898. In a city of severe land scarcity, this unusual law grants decedents of ‘original villager’s’ families (mainly Hakka people), upon their 18 birthday, rights to build a maximum three story house of no more than 2100 sqft. With skyrocketing housing prices downtown this has created a boom of these ‘village houses’ being build and sold, mainly to ‘new villagers’ migrating from the city, on lands that once were Hong Kong’s farms and rice paddies. This has led to rapid changes in the visuality of these once traditional villages. The most notable visual change among these communities is the disappearance of traditional Hakka ancestral family homes, which are now scattered throughout a maze of stylistically unrelated modern village houses. The vanishing of these unique homes continues at rapid pace and since commencement of a pilot study in the spring of 2018 at least half a dozen additional ancestral homes, some dating back over a century, have been demolished during the summer. This makes the study of these traditional homes, their visual culture, and how they once formed the backbones of these villages all the more urgent. In order to do so this visually driven study employs both audio and visual methods to seek a more in-depth picture of current village life in North Eastern New Territories, Hong Kong by observing, documenting, collaboratively creating, and jointly analysing the multimedia data captured. This study documents the derelict, intact, restored, in ruin ancestral structures, attempting to trace revitalized elements of traditional Hakka villages via their design, layouts, and relationship with the natural environment. The study looks at how the making and sharing of imagery can foster dialogue and analyse the current state of flux of these villages and their lands to reconsider the ‘place’ they occupy how these changes may affect visual cultural identity and connections with the past.

This project aims to examine the relationship between IDLE and two dimensions of EIL among Hong Kong university students, who are increasingly experiencing diverse accents among users of English through IDLE activities. Drawing on a sequential explanatory mixed-methods research design, data will be collected from 20 ESL/EFL classes at two universities by means of questionnaires (N = 400), open-ended questions (N = 400), semi-structured interviews (n = 40), and stimulated recalls (n = 40). With an interdisciplinary approach drawing from E-learning, sociolinguistics, and TESOL, theoretically this study can help us better understand and further theorize the way in which informal language practice using technology is related to contemporary students’ perceptions of EIL. Pedagogically, the findings will offer practical insights into how English language teachers can better prepare contemporary English learners for cross-cultural interactions in digital or face-to-face milieus.

The prevalent theory traces the origins of Chinese fiction to the Wei and Jin Dynasties and considers the Tang Dynasty the time when they emerged fully fledged. With the advancement of archaeological works in China, this theory is gradually being challenged by excavated works of fiction dated to the Warring States and the Qin and Han periods. However, questions such as what are the stylistic features of early Chinese fiction and how did the fiction genre developed from that of historical writing remain to be answered. The purpose of this project is to focus on Mutienzi zhuan (The Travels of King Mu) to answer the above questions. As the earliest excavated text that survives into the modern age in Chinese history, our research on Mutienzi zhuan involves multiple aspects. We will start with a textual study of the text from a paleographical perspective, then move on to date its contents by comparing the text against documented bronze sources. The third step is to analyze the stylistic features of Mutienzi zhuan by comparing it with selected early fiction from other cultures, such as The Golden Ass, One Thousand and One Nights, and Mesopotamian mythologies, and to investigate the authorship, readership, transmission, and consumption of early Chinese fiction from a social perspective. The last step is to distinguish between the real and imagined geography in the text and reconstruct the transportation geography of King Mu’s travels using a historical geographical approach. It is hoped that this comprehensive research on Mutienzi zhuan will contribute to the study of Chinese paleography, history, geography and literature.

This project examines an underexplored yet fundamental question in second language (L2) research: when acquiring new speech sounds, do L2 learners draw on knowledge of their first language (L1) phonology sound-by-sound or along some continuous dimension such as length?

Taking phonemic length (i.e. short vs. long sounds) as the test case, we will compare native listeners with different L1 backgrounds producing and perceiving length contrasts in non-native language(s). Their relative performance will answer numerous questions about how L1 transfer occurs.

The findings of the study are expected to have both theoretical and pedagogical implications. At the theoretical level, our findings can lead to a definitive conclusion at the ‘feature vs. category’ dialogue in L2 phonological acquisition. In turn, this will benefit learners of languages where length distinctions matter, such as Japanese. In the long run, our findings can also help teachers devise more effective pedagogical strategies.

The study examines the concurrent and prospective effect of executive functions on the integrated writing (IW) task performance in both Chinese (L1) and English (L2).

The study aims to examine the effects of task characteristics and intersubjective on the patterns of interaction in young non-Chinese speaking students in Hong Kong.

The notion of craft has for a long time been closely tied to making objects using materials produced through handmade processes. It has often been seen as activities performed by two different groups of makers: professional artisans; and do-it-yourself (DIY) amateur hobbyists. However, the emergence of new digital fabrication technologies in recent years has brought a significant shift in the maker group and culture. With the new digital means of making objects, theoretically, anyone can customize and produce one’s own goods. The concept has been embodied through the maker movement which refers to a cultural trend that places a high value on making physical things using digital technologies and craft skills. The idea of digital craft has been present for the past two decades. Individual practitioners started producing work with hybrid craft techniques, and proved the potential benefits of digital craft in expanding creativity and appealing to a wider audience. However, examinations of how the new technologies will affect the craft community and modes of production and distribution in the craft industry have been scarce. In response, this research aims to investigate how digital fabrication technologies influence craft practices as part of the maker movement. It also aims to identify challenges and opportunities for professional and amateur makers involved in conventional craft practices. Explorative qualitative studies will be carried out through digital fabrication workshops with twenty local makers. Through participant observation, pre-workshop and post-workshop interviews, and artifact (workshop outcome) analysis, the purpose of the study is to explore how different groups of makers’ practice and value perceptions are changed by the introduction of new digital tools. Additionally, the study will address issues that need to be resolved in both practical and socio-cultural contexts. It is expected that the findings from the study will have implications for the following aspects: It will provide an understanding of the significance of maker culture as socio-cultural practices and as a means to foster creativity and related industries.

十一世紀的黃庭堅（1045-1105）號山谷，是型塑北宋詩歌與禪宗形態、內涵的代表。其《山谷內集》有詩逾七百首，是今人認知山谷詩學、禪學的核心文獻。該集歷來以難解而聞名，註家甚少。自古及今的華人世界內唯宋代任淵（1090？-1164？）曾遍註內集詩，又唯錢鍾書（1910-1998）選註的逾八十首為當代學界山谷詩註的典範。然而，十五世紀室町時代的日本禪僧萬里集九（1428-1507？）曾著書《帳中香》，以漢文遍註內集。萬里獨特的知識背景、闡釋立場與心態，使得該書在詮解旨趣異於華人註家的同時，尤在認識《山谷內集》中詩禪關係的問題上，深具洞察。然此書的存在及其重要性，長期未為學界所熟知。本計劃即將針對萬里集九及其《帳中香》展開首次全面研究。筆者尤其將通過檢視該書以禪解詩的獨特路徑，反思《山谷內集》固有的內典化傾向，進而重新認識黃庭堅所引領的迥異於唐代傳統的宋型詩禪新風。同時，本計劃亦將有助學界重新探索，近古以降的中日兩國在詩禪文化上曾有的互動與共性。

Starting from the 1990s, the number of artists, dealers, curators, critics and collectors in China has grown exponentially. Apart from the record high prices which has caught the attention of the international media, contemporary Chinese art has become a hot topic and form of luxury goods - both within and outside the art world. Apart from the machinations of the art market, the era has also seen proponents of “culture”, fostering a national strategy in order to fill the ideological gap left by the social problems associated with China’s economic reforms. This strategy became a trend of thought among elites and government officials. Ever since the 17th Party Congress, the tagline, "enhance culture as part of soft power” became the official “guiding ideology” of the Chinese Communist Party in its plan for sustainable development. In recent years, the term "Chinese Dream" has been adapted to promote China's "soft power" by exhibiting modern Chinese values locally and globally. If contemporary Chinese art presents a set of conditions whereby players in the art market and institutions are able to directly or indirectly involve themselves in the monetary, symbolic and political exchange of art, those proposed conditions have prompted me to consider how contemporary art museums have aligned with the implementation of the national policy of “soft power.” To that end, in this project, I will study a few private museums that have been established in recent years in Shanghai, which include the Long Museum, the Yuz Museum, and the Shanghai 21st Century Minsheng Art Museum. This project aims to by-pass conventional art history approaches. Instead, it employs an ethnographical approach to investigate the story of contemporary Chinese art and its connection and relevance to the specific spaces and practices of the proposed museums. By evaluating recent Chinese cultural policies and providing my own descriptive experience that is informed by the narrative model of this project, this research will draw on insights from different players’ participation of museum activities to explain how individuals are inspired by the potentialities of the new locations of art production and consumption. The study will aim to question the shifting relationship of contemporary art to the state under the backdrop of the current cultural policy and how the establishment of contemporary art museums has become an important benchmark of cultural reform and urban renewal.

This project attempts to thoroughly study the melodies of tōgaku (Tang music) in Motomasa no Fue-fu (The Flute Score of Motomasa), an early twelfth-century Japanese source. Tōgaku was a repertory of entertainment music imported from China between the seventh and the ninth centuries, and was widely performed by musicians and aristocrats at the imperial court until its decline in the late fourteenth century. Japanese musicians compiled a large number of musical scores for the purposes of preservation and transmission of this repertory in Japan. Numerous reliable manuscript copies of these historical scores, together with a small number of the originals, have survived in Japan to the present. Although substantial research has been conducted on the development of tōgaku in the light of the music recorded in historical scores compiled before the end of the fourteenth century, a crucial question remains to be answered. This pertains to the background for the emergence of a new system of rhythmic signs in the notation compiled in the eleventh and the twelfth centuries. This system of rhythmic signs signifies a slightly different rhythmic structure of the melodies when compared with the structure indicated by the standard system. As historians of Japanese music know only too well, the importation of Chinese entertainment music was in fact part of the large-scale adoption of Chinese culture. This adoption was followed by a long process of assimilation of the imported culture in accordance with the needs of the Japanese. Given that the new system of rhythmic sign emerged in the period when the assimilation of Chinese culture reached its peak, it was likely the product of this assimilation. A thorough study of the tōgaku notation in Motomasa no Fue-fu may, therefore, shed important light on the development of this system of rhythmic signs since the score notates the tōgaku melodies performed during the apogee of adaptation of Chinese culture, namely the tenth and the eleventh centuries. This project will first elucidate and decipher the tablature signs and notational symbols in Motomasa no Fue-fu, and then followed by a transcription of the tōgaku notation. Through a comprehensive analysis of the transcribed melodies together with the textual information in Motomasa no Fue-fu, the project aims at uncovering the background for the use of a new system of rhythmic signs in the tōgaku notation and its cultural implications for the assimilation of Chinese cultures in Heian-period Japan.

Hong Kong television drama helped defined the Hong Kong identities, and its export into China has influenced generations of mainland audience. However, recent years has witnessed a “reverse flow”: many Hong Kong youngsters have taken an interest or developed a preference for television drama produced in China, such as Scarlet Heart (步步驚心), My Sunshine (何以笙簫默), and Eternal Love (三生三世十里桃花). This phenomenon is far from self-evident because all Hong Kongers’ national identifications drop after 2008, and this tendency is most evident in the youngsters. This project, thus, addresses an important and intriguing question: why, in light of significant anti-Mainland sentiments among Hong Kong youth, are Mainland TV dramas popular with this audience?

This study aims to examine the effectiveness of using mobile sequencing software namely Garageband for iOS and Walk Band for Android as a tool to facilitate music creation for the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) Music Examination. Paper 3, Creating I, is one of the core papers of the HKDSE music examination. Although it is a core paper, there is a lack of teaching and learning materials specifically designed for this paper with the use of technology. GarageBand and Walk Band are multifunctional applications which can realize and record music in real-time. With this handy device, students can create music anytime and anywhere. There are two phases in this study: in Phase 1 a selected group of music teachers and senior secondary students will be interviewed and perceptions and suggestions will be derived to formulate a composition pedagogy with the use of the application with a theoretical framework and practical teaching approaches. Phase 2 will be a multi-case study in which three pilot schools will be involved and music classes will be observed with the launch of the pedagogy for three months. In addition, teachers and students will be interviewed in order to validate the pedagogy. This study will provide a practical and validated pedagogy for school music teachers to prepare students for the HKDSE Music Examination.

In the Hong Kong context, the secretarial profession was considered one of the first whitecollar jobs for women, and became an indispensable component of the city’s economy in the latter half of the 20th century when Hong Kong gradually evolved into an international financial center. This project will trace the history of this phenomenon by using Sacred Heart Canossian College of Commerce (SHCCC) as a case study.

This ECS project, drawing on a complexity theory and adopting an ethnographic case study design, seeks to explore teacher educators’ expertise at different stages of their career and how they (re)construct their expertise through different forms of professional practice (eg, teaching, research and practicum supervision) across time and contexts. The study will make a theoretical contribution to our understanding of teacher educator expertise by shedding light on its subject-specific and context-sensitive nature as well as its developmental process mediated by various influencing factors at personal, institutional and societal levels. The study can also generate implications on how to support teacher educators’ professional development at different stages of their career in higher education.

本研究計劃試圖以歐陽修、曾鞏、蘇軾對「鬼神」的認識為切入點，把他們的「文道觀念」 和「祈祭禮文」、「禮法行為」相聯繫。一方面作精細的個案研究，同時希望從更宏觀的角度，分析北宋文人如何理解「禮文」、「禮法」和「道」的關係。

In this project, I argue that through such autobiographical moments, contemporary authors are exploring the emergence of mass surveillance within democratic culture, focusing on what democracy and surveillance both enjoin: the appearances and self-representations of twenty-first century citizen-subjects.

This project aims to fill this research gap by developing and validating a coherent suite of language testing instruments (DiaWrite) to diagnose Hong Kong undergraduates’ relative strengths and weaknesses in writing academic essays in English.

Architectural heritage conservation and research emerged as a distinct profession and critical issue in Hong Kong with the implementation of the Heritage Conservation Policy in the 2007-08 Policy Address of the Hong Kong SAR Government. Since then, heritage conservation and education has been a matter of urgency and concern in local development policies. This research aims at rigorously re-examining modern architecture, Chinese culture and tradition, and colonial Hong Kong in architectural design of the early twentieth century. Building on the PI’s engagement with a non-profit organization in which she is a founding member to raise international public awareness regarding the historical significance of the modern movement in architecture (DOCOMOMO- Documentation and Conservation of buildings, sites and neighbourhoods of the Modern Movement- Hong Kong Chapter), this research will be rooted in both Western and Chinese academic discourse and research frameworks but emerge to formulate an improved direction for Hong Kong heritage policy and education in modern architecture. Research and interest in Chinese architects and architectural practices have been increasing in recent years. Wang (2008) focused on mainland Chinese architects in Hong Kong, but only in the period after 1949. Ho (2010) has noted that in the first half of the twentieth century, new knowledge was promoted by the construction industry in Hong Kong via new technology, and that contractors had promoted the modernisation of construction education and changed the traditional practice of apprenticeship starting in the mid-1930s (Ho 2010: 124). Besides contractors, architects were also at the forefront of experimentation in modernisation of the urban landscape. Research on early twentieth century architects Hong Kong architects, however, is still obscure, and only few and limited attempts exist. Until now there is only one publication of around ten ‘first-generation’ Chinese (two Eurasian) architects (Ng and Chu 2007). Ng and Chu’s publication, although important, is mainly a brief collection of the works of the individual architects, and does not go into depths to discuss how the Hong Kong architects mediated between traditional Chinese architectural forms and colonial prototypes to designing modern urban landscapes. The PI of this project has moreover discovered that one of the family members of an architect in this proposed research is related to the father of modern China, Sun Yat-sen (Kwan 1997), but to date there is no information, besides this proposed project, that has attempted to unveil the intricate relationship of this family lineage upon the early modern urban development of Hong Kong. With the first group of overseas-educated Chinese architects returning to colonial Hong Kong in the 1920s-30s and establishing themselves as the pioneers of designing the modern city, this period witnessed the first signs of urban modernisation in Hong Kong. However, compared to Shanghai, Hong Kong was often deemed as the lesser “other”, specifically that the “island [of Hong Kong] did not go through architectural transformation in the 1930s as Shanghai did” (Lee 1999: 328). A decade and a half has passed since this statement, and new discoveries in academia, including this research, will place a new dimension and perspective in the previously underrated and neglected modern architectural and urban landscape of Hong Kong. This research documents demolished buildings and aims to not only preserve surviving works of Hong Kong and Chinese architects, but also effectively repositions local architectural history and modern cultural heritage. It will lay the foundations for public heritage educational work, delineate how the architecture reacted to Western colonial prototypes while adapting to Chinese traditions in the early twentieth century, and improve the current heritage policy to preserve the unique cultural heritage landscape in Hong Kong and Chinese architecture.

With discoveries of lavish Han tombs in recent decades, material of the Han Dynasty (206 BC– 220 AD) continues to proliferate. Studies of these unearthed Han artefacts have increased, but they are primarily based on a particular category of art objects or within a specific tomb excavation. Also, archaeological materials are generally perceived as alternative sources that can complement documentary materials. This project, by contrast, attempts to focus on a very different issue, that of imitation, as the central theme to explore and rethink the materiality and identity of different ritual objects within the context of tomb, and also the wider subjects of cultural and social practices, and beliefs in the Han Dynasty. Imitation was prevalent and constant in the material world, once distinctions of value began to occur among various materials. There are myriad examples of imitation throughout ancient China, such as ceramic ding tripods (鼎), wooden bi discs (璧), etc., showing that it was popular and understandable to use inexpensive material to imitate objects made of valuable primary material, such as bronze and jade. However, the authentic situation of imitation was conceivably far more complex in the Han Dynasty. For example, the existence of jade imitation was a case of reverse logic. Moreover, imitation not only occurred among various materials, but also between genuine objects and image representations. Building on the solid foundation of a substantial collection of primary sources, such as excavated artefacts and manuscripts, archaeological reports, mural paintings, stone engravings, museum collections, catalogues, and ancient literature materials, this project will establish a solid archive and basis for both current and future related studies. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, an attempt will be made to shed light on various significant but hitherto unnoticed cases of imitation during Han times, and to understand what incentivised the choice of material, revealing the embedded cultural and social value in the objects and fabrication. Besides using conventional historical methodology to study ancient literature materials, this project will largely rely on the archaeological data and employ art historical stylistic analyses; also a sociological approach will be adopted. More broadly, it will highlight the importance of studies on material culture as a way to enhance our understanding of the religious ideologies as well as the history of Han society.

The study contends that the cultural influence of the PRC on Hong Kong was significant during the Cold War era. In addition to exploring the cultural exchange across two ideological blocs, the project also proposes a solution to the problem of reception.

本研究聚焦於民國時期的古代文學研究，並以個案研究作為主要方法。

In addition to providing a rich source of authentic spoken data, both quantitatively and qualitatively, for studying mid-20th century Cantonese, this proposed project will also focus on the possible mechanisms and the conditions involved in the development of Cantonese by comparing against 19th century and contemporary data.

本項目旨在研究戰後香港方言文學運動的成績，考察左派文人在港推動左翼革命文藝的文學史意義，並揭示香港作為一個殖民城市，如何制約左派文人的宣傳和寫作策略。

This study aims to investigate how university students understand prevailing political discourses in Hong Kong’s social-political context; investigate the development of citizenship and (re)construction of identity among university students within Hong Kong’ socio-political, cultural and economic discourses; identify the difficulties and challenges students face in their interactions with peers holding different political and ideological views and their coping strategies; and provide theoretical resources and suggest effective university-level measures and individual-level strategies to facilitate students’ whole-person development.

The present project will be the first to address this issue, exploring infants ’ relative sensitivity to and use of consonants, vowels and tones in Cantonese and French environments.