The Asian Corpus of English (ACE)

The project teams are collecting a corpus of one million words of naturally occurring, spoken, interactive data of English being used as a lingua franca in Asia. We are working closely with Professor Barbara Seidlhofer's University of Vienna team, which collected the Vienna Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE). In this way, researchers will be able to compare features of European and Asian ELFs. The year 2010 focussed on data collection. Regional teams were established at the University of Malaya, the National Institute of Education, Singapore, SEAMEO Retrac in Ho Chi Minh City, Ateneo de Manila University and SEAMEO Innotech in Manila. The findings (Kirkpatrick Reference Kirkpatrick and Ward2009, Reference Kirkpatrick2010, Reference Kirkpatrick2011) show how English is used as a language of communication between multilinguals in Asia, and have significant implications for English language teaching and intercultural communication in Asia.

Trilingualism and trilingual education in minority regions of China

The three languages involved are the respective national minority language, the national language, Putonghua, and English. This research aims to gain an in-depth understanding of trilingualism and trilingual education in minority-dominated regions in China (Adamson & Feng Reference Adamson and Feng2009). It also seeks a comprehensive understanding of the forces that shape the policy and implementation of trilingualism and trilingual education, of the linguistic typology of language allocation in real-world classrooms, and of the perceptions and attitudes held by the stakeholders in trilingualism. The first symposium for the research project, ‘Trilingualism and trilingual education in minority regions in China: comparative multiple-case studies in minority autonomous regions’, was hosted by RCLEAMS at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, on 18–19 December 2009. Initial results show that the minority language gets mixed and variable attention according to region. Putonghua is strongly promoted across the board. Indeed, as schools struggle to find teachers of English who can use the minority language, they often teach English through the medium of Putonghua. Communities support the implementation of English teaching in primary schools for the economic and social benefits it may bring to schoolchildren, but they do not seem to have a clear understanding of the nature of the language and the problems that the children face in learning it.

Linguistic and cultural ecology

This study seeks to determine who speaks what language to whom, when and why in selected university settings. In the Hong Kong context, we are interested in identifying the functional uses of Cantonese, Putonghua and English. Multiple research methods have been adopted, including a questionnaire survey (November 2009 to January 2010), individual interviews (February to March 2010), focus group interviews (April to May 2010) and students’ journals (February to May 2010). To date, 342 HKIEd students have been surveyed, consisting of 247 Hong Kong local students, 64 mainland students and 31 international students. The students represent a range of disciplines and year levels. This project also has a comparative and international dimension, as complementary research is being conducted at The National University of Malaysia. The preliminary findings suggest that the linguistic practices of students are used to negotiate their national, ethnic and regional identities, and that the interactions between individuals influence, and are influenced by, the multiple discursive and social practices prevalent in a multilingual setting.

Using the local/regional language as the language of internationalization: the case of Cantonese and Putonghua in Hong Kong

The project investigates the extent to which non-local transnational academics and students would consider learning Cantonese and/or Putonghua during their stay in Hong Kong. Three complementary methods were used to collect data: an online survey, individual interviews (September to December 2009), and focus group interviews (in progress). The preliminary findings, based on the analysis of 75 completed online questionnaires and 20 (out of 63) individual interviews, suggest three main challenges to the goal of internationalization through the learning of Cantonese as an additional language, namely:

1. (i) the bilingualism (English and/or Putonghua) of Cantonese-speaking locals, as (a) many non-locals found it unnecessary to learn Cantonese, and (b) their local interlocutors tended to prefer or switch to their shared language (English/Putonghua) for effective communication;

2. (ii) acquisitional problems, including the Cantonese tone system, the logographic writing system, and the absence of a standardized Romanization system;

3. (iii) interactional factors: non-locals were reportedly put off by locals’ laughing, which was de-motivating, as it tended to be heard as ridicule.

Perceptions of English language suitability and processes of language assessment recruitment in Filipino call centres

This project is investigating how Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) screeners and recruiters in two call centres in the Philippines make decisions about which candidates demonstrate the ‘best’ language ability for the call centres. Findings to date include that native speaker CEOs are less concerned than local senior and middle management with the L1 interference mistakes of call centre employees and applicants. Local recruiters also made harsher judgments about the suitability of applicants’ English. A related project involves a longitudinal study being carried out in a large bank in India. This study is tracking newly recruited call centre agents over a twelve-month period. The final report was expected at the end of 2010.

Effects of language aptitude and personality on linguistic performance in English as a second language: a study in two Chinese populations

This study investigated the potential effects of language aptitude and personality on linguistic performance in L2 English in two Chinese populations. University students from Hong Kong (n = 100) and from Guangzhou, mainland China (n = 100) completed the Chinese version of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck, Eysenck & Barret Reference Eysenck, Eysenck and Barrett1991) and undertook a language aptitude test modelled and adapted from the Modern Language Aptitude Test (Sasaki Reference Sasaki1996). The Hong Kong students’ L2 linguistic performance was measured by the Language Proficiency Assessment for Teachers of English (LPATE). The mainland Chinese students’ L2 linguistic performance was measured by the national Test for English Majors (TEM). A series of statistical analyses was conducted to examine the effects of language aptitude and personality on students’ L2 linguistic performance. In addition, protocol data was collected and analysed to explore how these effects are affected by L1 background, type of L2 performance test, and educational and social contexts. An in-depth discourse analysis of students’ actual oral performance was conducted using a wide range of linguistic measures. These measures were then studied in relation to participants’ degree of extroversion. Findings suggest that no significant effect of extroversion was seen in either the oral discourse produced by the participants, or in the scores awarded by the trained assessor.

An inquiry into boundary-crossing teacher trainees

The study used in-depth narrative interviews to explore teacher trainees’ expectations and aspirations prior to their entry to the teacher education program at the HKIEd. The study focused on boundary-crossing teacher trainees with a range of educational, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds and addressed the complex issue of being teachers in multilingual contexts such as Hong Kong (Gao & Trent Reference Gao and Trent2009; Trent & Gao Reference Trent and Gao2009). The study is intended to be the start of a longitudinal inquiry into teacher trainees’ professional development inside and beyond the Institute. A related study explored the formation of teaching identity in a group of pre-service English teachers from mainland China who studied in a teacher education institute in the multilingual context of Hong Kong (Trent in press; Gu Reference Gu2010). In-depth narrative interviews, diaries, and photo journals were adopted to capture the complex relationship involved in the process of identity construction between marginal status and legitimate membership of the community, between prior experience, present practice and imagination, and between social discourse, institutional construction and personal development. One of the emerging findings from the project reveals the challenges that these boundary-crossing teacher trainees had to face in getting themselves recognized as ‘proper teachers’ in their new contexts. The ongoing research efforts focus on how these trainees cope successfully with the challenges involved in negotiating their professional identities and asserting their professional authority.

Vocabulary development among learners of English in a Hong Kong primary school

This study extended existing Hong Kong L2 developmental studies by performing a case study of a primary school in Hong Kong in which learners are exposed equally, in terms of school time, to English and Chinese. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-III) was individually administered to 180 children between primary 1 and primary 6 (30 children at each age level) and the Raven's coloured progressive matrices to the children in groups. The significance of the study is that it allows an examination of the relationship between a particular type of curriculum/language education philosophy and children's vocabulary development (with the IQ factor controlled), and allows us to identify at what point in development 50% of L2 learners (50% criterion) will behave similarly to their monolingual peers. The research resulted in the publication of a bilingual textbook (Wong Reference Wong2009).

The Multilingual project: policy and implementation

This project was set up to review and compare regional Chinese language and language education policies in Hong Kong (Kirkpatrick & Chau Reference Kirkpatrick and Chau2008) and Southeast Asia with a view to informing the development of such policies (Tong & Goh Reference Tong and Goh2008). The Singapore team has already established a databank of language policy documents which they have categorized into six groups: (i) newspaper articles (854); (ii) monographs (19); (iii) book chapters (64); (iv) journal papers (69); (v) government press releases (46); and (vi) public speeches of senior officials (69). The next step is to set up an electronic databank, accessible to other researchers. The focus of the second stage of the data bank is on Chinese language education in Malaysia.