Research and Professional Development Committee

In 2007-2008, the Centre conducted a wide range of projects in areas such as:

The nature of academic and professional discourse:

• Authorship as understood by students: An exploratory study (Y. Loong)
• The construction of ESL-medium tertiary language policy in Hong Kong: Unpacking the educational discourse of government, university and legal education stakeholders (N. Bruce)
• A corpus theoretical approach to investigating shared knowledge acquisition in a Web Bulletin Board context (L. Cheung)
• Genre acquisitions, identities and roles in placements’ communities of practice (K. Lau)
• Interaction in problem-based learning (PBL) in Clinical Medicine: A discoursal inquiry into the development of professional participation (A. Storey)
• The development of an English for academic purposes course at the University of Hong Kong: From needs analysis to course evaluation (M. Legg)

English in the disciplines:

• Developing Pilot “English in the Major” courses for 3 major faculties – Arts, Engineering, & Social Sciences: a collaboration between English Centre and Faculty teachers (N. Bruce, T. Au (Psychology), C. Cheng (Psychology), S. Cole, W. Cristaudo (European Studies), P. Desloge, K. Lau, J. Lee, M. Legg, E. Martyn, S. Matthews (Linguistics), K. Shih (Civil Engineering) A. Storey, E. Tan, R. Vogt: Arts (European Studies), B. Wo, and L. Wong)
• Identifying the English language and communicative demands of bedside learning on students in the clinical years (L. K. Chan (Institute of Medical and Health Science Education), L. K. Tse and A. Storey)
• A pilot English in the Major project with the Faculty of Science (D. Gardner and D.L. Phillips (Chemistry))
• Proposal for a pilot project for the development of a business communication assessment mechanism for the Faculty of Business and Economics (Y. Loong, P. Smyth, E. Christopher (Business and Economics), A. Lau (Business and Economics))

Language acquisition:

• The interaction of implicit and formulaic explicit feedback in the acquisition of English as a second language. (W. L. Tsang)
• An investigation of the learning of Chinese characters and its effects on learning other aspects of Chinese by non-native Chinese learners (C. Wong)
• The L3 acquisition of null arguments in Mandarin Chinese (I. Leung, Linguistics, HKU; W. L Tsang and V. Yip, CUHK)

Computers, self-access and language learning:

• Development of the English learning Wiki as an online resource for HKU students (P. Voller & C. Wong)
• The integration of information and communication technology in Hong Kong primary English lessons (N. Fong)
• Web-based learning / Exit e-portfolio Project (E. Martyn, L. Wong, P. Desloge, W. Chow, J. Lee, M. Malby, P. Smyth and C. Wong)

Literature in language learning:

• Contemporary Asian poetry in English (A. Lam)

Funding

Funding for the projects comes from various sources including the Research Grants Council, the Teaching Development Grant, the Committee on Research and Conference Grants, Seed Funding Programme for Basic Research, and the University Grants Committee.