The Language and Literature Division (LLD) is the largest of the six divisions of the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong (HKU). It is currently home to 34 academic staff, who specialize either in the fields of Chinese Language, English Language and/or Literature Education, and to 60 full-time and 28 part-time doctoral students, who are researching a wide range of topics including subjects as diverse as corpus-aided language learning, task-based language teaching in primary schools, the English writing of Chinese undergraduates, and the impact of school-based assessment. Staff are very active in conducting their own research, much of which is rooted in classrooms and focuses on issues that directly concern the teaching and learning of languages, such as reading literacy, school-based assessment and assessment for learning in English Language, the teaching of Chinese characters, and good practices in English Language Teaching in Hong Kong secondary schools (see http://good-practices.edb.hkedcity.net/). Colleagues in the English Language area have played important roles in the HKU Strategic Research Theme ‘Language in education and assessment’. This initiative brought together staff from a range of disciplines in various forms of language-related research collaboration, culminating in two large and highly successful international conferences in June 2008: one focusing on language awareness and the other on language issues in English-medium universities (see http://www.hku.hk/clear/).
This report will briefly describe LLD research projects in 2008, with projects in the English and Chinese Language area introduced separately.
Projects in the area of English Language
In 2008, LLD had five major funded research projects in the area of English Language: four focusing on English language assessment, and one on multi-literacies education.
English language assessment has an enormous influence on what goes on in the classroom and exerts considerable impact on students’ learning and attitudes. Promoting the positive impact of assessment on students’ learning is a major focus of educational reform in Hong Kong. The four projects in English assessment share a common interest in investigating and promoting the formative, learning function(s) of assessment, rather than its summative, measurement function.
The Primary English Assessment for Learning project focused on the implementation of Assessment for Learning (AfL) by primary English language teachers in Hong Kong. The study comprised multi-site qualitative case studies of primary school teachers implementing AfL in their own classrooms, using as data classroom observations, interviews, and documentary analysis. The main focus of the project was on the interplay between summative and formative assessment, specifically how test follow-up could support enhanced student learning (see http://web.edu.hku.hk/research/cerg/carless.html).
Three projects focused on the School-based Assessment innovation program (SBA) in Hong Kong secondary schools. SBA is an assessment innovation intended to shift English language assessment away from norm-referenced, external assessment towards criterion-referenced, school-based assessment, through incorporating a school-based oral assessment component into the compulsory English language subject examination, taken at the end of Secondary 5 (the equivalent of Grade 11, i.e. 16-year-olds). Colleagues in LLD have been extensively involved in the development, implementation, and evaluation of SBA through providing consultancy and conducting a series of research projects (for information regarding these SBA projects, see http://web.hku.hk/~sbapro/projects.html).
The Aligning Assessment with Curriculum Reform project aimed to understand the existing assessment practices and beliefs of teachers working at junior secondary level (i.e. Secondary 1–3, Grade 7–9, 12–14-year-olds), and to develop effective school-based formative assessment activities, instruments and procedures that are explicitly linked to high-quality oral English language teaching and learning. Although the junior secondary levels are an important stage in the development of students’ oral English skills and provide a base for the successful implementation of SBA at the senior (Secondary 4–5) levels, there was a dearth of research at these lower levels. This project involved collaboration with front-line teachers at these levels to conduct systematic, school-based action-research.
The Use of Summative Oral SBA for Formative Purposes project aimed to identify and describe the range and type of teacher and student support needed for the effective use of SBA for formative purposes, thereby shedding new light on how teachers could scaffold and guide students to improve learning. It investigated the extent to which the summative–formative dichotomy of assessment could be bridged in the high-stakes ESL teaching context of Hong Kong. The project involved collaboration with 16 Secondary four-level English language teachers and their students to investigate and evaluate the ways in which the oral summative SBA could be used formatively to improve teaching and learning. The study adopted a Vygotskian socio-cultural perspective, using discourse analysis to describe and evaluate planned teacher–student feedback.
Finally, the SBA Impact Study aimed to contribute to our understanding of the impact of SBA at both the macro-levels of education and society and the micro-levels of school and classroom. The study examined the processes of implementation and the impact of the SBA innovation on teachers, students and other stakeholders in order to understand the nature of the factors that appeared to facilitate or inhibit successful implementation. A central part of the project was critical analysis of data gathered during the two-year cycle of implementation of SBA in three selected secondary schools (see http://web.edu.hku.hk/research/cerg/steve.html).
The ways of creating and working with multimodal contemporary texts are referred to as New Literacies. The New Literacies education project was a professional development and research project aiming to enhance the teaching and learning of ‘New Literacies’, which are an increasingly important focus of the English language curriculum in Hong Kong schools. The study examined the new literacy practices of senior primary school pupils (Primary 4–6, i.e. 9–11-year-olds) and junior secondary school students (Secondary 1–3, i.e. 12–14-year-olds) to identify the range and type of support needed. The study aimed to support teachers in understanding and implementing New Literacies pedagogy, and to foster collaboration and sharing of best practices among teachers. The study involved six primary schools and five secondary schools (see http://www3.hku.hk/literacy/).
Projects in the area of Chinese Language
In 2008, there were eight research projects in the Chinese Language area, focusing on Chinese language reading literacy, the language education of non-Chinese ethnic minorities, and diversified approaches to teaching, learning and assessing of Chinese language.
Chinese language reading literacy
The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2006 examined the reading literacy in Chinese of Primary 4 (i.e. 9-year-old) pupils in Hong Kong and investigated multiple issues and factors associated with their acquisition of reading literacy. The project employed an innovative, standardized measurement instrument to measure reading literacy on four comprehension processes for two major reading purposes (literacy and informative), which enabled comparison of reading achievement across diverse educational contexts. It also utilized multiple questionnaires to delineate the various factors affecting reading, such as the influence and interaction of distant conditions such as home factors and proximal conditions such as school and teacher characteristics. The project involved a minimum of 150 schools and at least 5,000 pupils (see http://www.cacler.hku.hk/project/index.php?mode=dt&id=16).
Linked to this is a three-year longitudinal study of bilingual reading literacy of Primary 4 pupils in English and Chinese language, focusing on the factors that influence bilingual reading acquisition, such as the reading habits and attitudes of pupils, the school environment and teaching methods, the use of private tuition, the home language, and the time children spent watching TV and playing computer games. In this study, special attention was given to the factors promoting success and also to children who succeed in difficult circumstances (see http://www.cacler.hku.hk/project/index.php?mode=dt&id=17).
Supporting non-Chinese speaking ethnic minority students
Chinese is the dominant native language for the majority of residents in Hong Kong. However, about 5% of the population is not ethnic Chinese. For the ethnic minority students from non-Chinese Speaking (NCS) families in Hong Kong, learning to be competent speakers and writers of Chinese is of great importance; a good command of Chinese can improve their social integration and education. However, most NCS students find the learning of Chinese very difficult. One factor making support for their learning of Chinese difficult is inadequate understanding of the learning characteristics of these students, and the lack of suitable teaching strategies and resources for their teachers.
Following an earlier study in 2007, which identified the minimal Chinese language standard necessary for the NCS students to learn effectively and study steadily in Chinese in local primary and secondary schools, in 2008 LLD had two projects focusing on Chinese language education of NCS students. One project aimed to design a school-based Chinese language curriculum for NCS students, and to recommend effective teaching strategies, while the other provided services for the Chinese-learning support centers in the five NCS-concentrated secondary schools in Hong Kong through the development of teaching materials, self-access learning materials and assessment tasks, and by providing teacher development workshops and student support.
Diversified approaches to enhance learning
In 2008, four projects were conducted to support the new senior secondary school curriculum in Hong Kong (Secondary 4–6, 15–17-year-olds). Two interlinked studies focused on the challenges of teaching and learning secondary school subjects in the Chinese medium. The two studies identified the written subject-specific genres that students have to master in the subjects of Chemistry, Biology, and Economics; analyzed students’ problems and difficulties in using Chinese while performing academic tasks in these subjects, with special reference to the subject-specific genres; and developed and promoted an effective genre-based teaching approach through the involvement of teachers at all stages of the project (see http://web.edu.hku.hk/academic_staff.php?staffId=mskshum).
Cantonese opera is Hong Kong's local cultural treasure, rich in language art and cultural symbols. The Integrate Cantonese Opera in Education project promoted an interactive approach to learning Chinese language and arts from Cantonese opera artists. Through studying the scripts and going to theatres to learn basic performance skills from the Cantonese opera artists, secondary students had the chance to understand, reflect on, and appreciate the art of Cantonese opera, while improving their Chinese language capability and interest in language learning. The project also involved extensive professional training for teachers, and the development of curriculum, teaching materials and assessment mechanisms (see http://cacler.hku.hk/news/index.php?mode=1&id=5).
The Alternative Assessment: Portfolios and School-based Assessment of Chinese Language project is a professional development project, which aimed to enhance secondary teachers’ assessment literacy and to promote an assessment for learning culture in the secondary Chinese language classrooms. The project developed, piloted, validated, and disseminated a framework of assessment for learning portfolios for Chinese language in senior secondary schools in Hong Kong (see http://qcrc.qef.org.hk/qef/project.phtml?proposal_id=2005/0201&lang=en).
Summary
This report has outlined thirteen funded projects conducted by staff in LLD in 2008. These projects covered a wide range of academic interests, using diverse research methods, from large-sample survey to case study, from action research to critical discourse analysis, from interviews, classroom observations to genre analysis. Such research endeavor has generated an ever-increasing number of books and journal articles, both international and local/regional. In the interests of space, however, a reference list of publications is not provided; instead, links to the websites of these projects are provided to enable interested readers to follow up details of these projects. Finally, interested readers can also access the other ongoing research activities in LLD via the following links:
Faculty website: http://web.edu.hku.hk/research.php
Projects in the Chinese Language area: http://www.cacler.hku.hk/project/index.php
Projects in the English Language area: http://web.edu.hku.hk/research/cerg/index
