Search

Though there has been an increased focus on climate change in Hong Kong's educational policy and curriculum over the last decade, little is known about the impact of curricular implementation on young people's environmental and climate change-related views, attitudes, awareness, or behaviors. This paper examines the state of climate change education in Hong Kong based on findings from a multi-pronged investigation. The main research questions addressed are: (1) what are Hong Kong secondary students’ understandings of and attitudes towards climate change issues? and (2) is there any significant difference between students studying in local and international schools in Hong Kong? The paper provides a content analysis of climate change curriculum in local and international schools. It reports on a large-scale survey of international and local school students’ environmental attitudes, and on qualitative interviews of their awareness and behaviors related to climate change. We conclude with reflections on the implications of this study for climate change education in Hong Kong in the future and vital areas for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of popular culture into English language learning has recently been formalised in the Hong Kong New Senior Secondary curriculum, with the development of critical reading indicated as one of the key objectives. Whether and how students respond to popular culture texts is, however, under-researched. The present paper reports findings from a study that investigated how a group of 33 senior secondary (Grade 11) students from three schools representing different levels of academic performance in Hong Kong conducted reading of an authentic print English advertisement. In small groups, the students articulated in Cantonese, their first language, an analysis of the text including its purpose, target audience, and intended impacts. Insights from Stuart Hall’s three major decoder positions (dominant reading, oppositional reading, and negotiated reading) were drawn on to conduct a qualitative content analysis of the students’ reading. The findings showed that three-quarters of the students irrespective of their English proficiency levels displayed evidence of critical consumption of the text, but many seemed to have constructed oppositional or negotiated reading positions due to their failure to appreciate linguistic creativity, and spontaneous evaluation of the visual images. The authors argue that language curricula in schools should strengthen students’ critical multimodal literacies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In learning mathematics through English, one of the major challenges facing English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners is understanding the language used to present word problems in mathematics texts. Without comprehending such language, learners are not able to carry out the targeted calculations no matter how familiar they are with the mathematical concepts behind. As many researchers have pointed out, distinctive combinations of certain vocabulary and grammatical structures are often found in the mathematical register. It is therefore important for teachers to discover, analyse and provide guidance on how learners can best tackle those linguistic challenges. This paper attempts to achieve this goal by first identifying and classifying, from word problem examples, the potential linguistic challenges at the word, phrase, clause and discourse levels. It then proceeds to suggest specific linguistic and multimodal strategies with good potential to help EFL learners overcome such challenges, with reference to the relevant literature and examples. It concludes by reiterating the importance of mathematics teachers' active engagement with the language used in word problems and suggesting possible collaboration between them and English language teachers in promoting EFL learners' awareness of the language of mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I review the four articles in this special issue, elucidate the main challenges faced by bilingual teachers when helping their Cantonese-dominant students learn both the content and target language (English) through content and language integrated learning-compatible pedagogies, and give a critical appraisal of their respective contributions to good practices and theory-building in research on translanguaging or classroom code-switching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an excerpt of teacher–student interaction in an EFL junior secondary science classroom in Hong Kong is analysed using the conversation analytic method of sequential analysis. The fine-grained analysis reveals that in the teacher's effort to engage her students in the co-construction of a scientific proof, the students' familiar everyday discourses (e.g. students' examples and experiences as expressed in their familiar language) need to be allowed to play a significant role. It also shows how translanguaging can be well-coordinated with multimodal practices (using blackboard drawings, gestures) to facilitate students' meaning-making in the inquiry-based teacher–student dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, school-based assessment (SBA) has been incorporated into the English Language subject of a traditional high-stakes public examination, the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination. As reactions from various stakeholder groups have been mixed, it was necessary to review this new practice. This paper reports on a study of 33 English language teachers who have been frontline SBA assessors. The study aimed to better understand (1) teacher-assessors’ perceptions of the English SBA, (2) their professional development needs in relation to implementing SBA, (3) their perceptions of how students could benefit from SBA and (4) the pressing issues arising from the SBA implementation. The study found that, while many participants agreed that SBA could be beneficial to students’ English learning, there was much room for improvement in all four aspects investigated. In particular, some problems identified at the very beginning of the implementation of the English SBA have still persisted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]