Exploring the subject-specific genres of Liberal Studies in the reforming Secondary School curriculum

postprintThe 36th International Systemic Functional Congress (ISFC36) cum 11th China Functional Linguistics Conference, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, 14-18 July 2009

Enhancing students' writing ability in Liberal Studies by subject-specific genre teaching

Conference Theme: To boldly proceedpostprin

Using 'Reading to Learn, Learning to Write' pedagogy to teach discussion genre to second language Chinese learners in Hong Kong

The Congress program's website is located at http://sti.sysu.edu.cn/en/ISFC40/ProgramSession - Parallel 2Congress Theme: Broadening the Path: Complementarities in Language and LinguisticsThis paper aims at exploring the effectiveness of ‘Reading to Learn, Learning to Write’ pedagogy to teach discussion genre to second language Chinese learner in Hong Kong. After the re-union to China in 1997, for the ethnic minority students who live in Hong Kong for …postprin

An analysis of writing skills of non-Chinese speaking students in Hong Kong: taking students' pretest and posttest narrative performance in Student Support Programme as an example

記敍文是香港非華語學生學習中文的基礎文類。本研究以60位分別接受主流中文課程和調適中文課程的非華語學生為對象，選取他們參加香港大學「學生支援計劃」的記敍文前測和後測共120 篇文章，以系統功能語言學為理論框架，分析學生在通篇層次、句子層次和字詞層次的表現，藉此比較兩組非華語學生中文書寫能力的差異，並探究「學生支援計劃」提昇非華語學生中文水平的成效。postprin

Analysis of students' reflective essays on their first human dissection experience

Purpose: Reflection is increasingly being used in higher education, but the criteria to assess the depth of reflection in student essays are difficult to define. This article tested the hypothesis that a good reflective essay contains more terms indicating mental processes. Methods: The authors selected two essays written by first year medical students at The University of Hong Kong, after their first encounter with cadavers in their dissection class. The two essays were perceived by teachers as having different depths of reflection. The transitivity system in Systemic Functional Linguistics was adopted to compare the two essays in terms of percentage occurrence of different process types (mental, material, relational, verbal, behavioral, existential). Results: The analysis showed that the essay with deeper reflection had a higher percentage occurrence of mental and relational processes and a low percentage occurrence of material processes. The other three processes accounted for only a low percentage of processes in both essays. Conclusion: From the transitivity analysis of the two reflective essays, the hypothesis that a good reflective essay contains more terms indicating mental processes is supported. The transitivity system in systemic functional linguistics can thus be used as an objective framework for assessing the depth of reflection in written essays.link_to_OA_fulltex

Which Agenda? Medium of Instruction Policy in Post-1997 Hong Kong

The mandatory use of mother tongue education in Hong Kong after 1997 met strong objections from the local community. While the government put forward a comprehensive educational agenda to justify the implementation of the policy, this paper raises the question of whether the change in language policy was mainly driven by an educational agenda, or whether there were other underlying agendas. To address the question, the history of the medium of instruction in Hong Kong is reviewed, and the experience of three decolonised Asian countries, Malaysia, Singapore and India, is discussed. The paper suggests that the political agenda has always played an important role in language policy formulation and implementation. In view of the important role that language plays in nation building and social reconstruction, it is inevitable that Chinese medium instruction will become more and more important. How the government will balance the need to strengthen the national identity of Hong Kong people and the need to maintain the international out look and economic development of Hong Kong will have a major impact on there view of the new medium of instruction policy in 2001.published_or_final_versio

South Asian students' educational experience and attainment: learning Chinese as a second/additional language in Hong Kong

published_or_final_versio

Learning to read a logographic writing system as a second language: an ERP study of L2 Chinese proficient readers

Poster Session E - Language Development, Plasticity, Multilingualism: no. E33For native readers of alphabetic scripts, learning to read a logographic system such as Chinese is challenging. This is not only because Chinese characters look drastically unlike from words in alphabetic scripts, but also because mappings between orthographic and phonological units in the two systems are different. In this study, we investigated two measures of orthography-phonology mapping-- phonological regularity and consistency--in relatively proficient late-acquired second language (L2) readers of Chinese in lexical decision (LD) and delayed naming (DN) tasks. Most Chinese characters are phonograms, which have a phonetic radical that carries phonological ...postprin

Processing sublexical phonology in L2 Chinese character reading: An ERP study

Poster Session 2: no. ps2p7Compared to alphabetic scripts, the distinct forms of Chinese characters as orthographic units and the fundamental difference in the mappings between orthographic, phonological, and semantic units lead to specific demands in L2 Chinese processing. The current study examined the sensitivity to and time course of two measures of orthography-phonology mapping-- phonological regularity and consistency-- for relatively proficient L2 readers of Chinese. Most Chinese characters are phonograms, which have a phonetic radical that carries phonological information. Regularity in these phonograms is defined by the congruence between the pronunciation of a phonogram and that of its phonetic radical. Consistency is the extent to which the pronunciation of the phonogram is shared by other …postprin