Struggling to thrive: The impact of Chinese language assessments on social mobility of Hong Kong ethnic minority youth

The paper aims to address the issues arising from the alternative Chinese qualifications policy on ethnic minorities’ (EM) social mobility, and how such multi-exit assessment framework affect Chinese as a second language (CSL) teaching and learning in local school contexts. Chinese language qualifications other than the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) have been accepted by the University Grants Committee (UGC)-funded institutions in Hong Kong as university admission requirements, including General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE), and General Certificate of Education (GCE). These international qualifications, although recognized as CSL “alternatives”, are oftentimes considered lower-level non-equivalents to HKDSE in the job market. Even high achievers in these examinations are criticized by local employers as less-than-competent in workplace Chinese communication. Moreover, civil service jobs traditionally popular among EM require a Level 2 in HKDSE or specific government tests, which “implied” the said alternative qualifications as insufficient for career advancement. Chinese language teachers and EM students are thus torn between the manageable alternative qualifications to improve university admission chances, or the difficult HKDSE examination as well for better career opportunities, which reduce their chance of upward mobility. Through triangulation of data from different sources, the authors also look into the challenges to curriculum planning and design faced by Chinese language teachers at the time of policy changes, and recommend that policy reviews be carried out based on recent demographic shifts and classroom realities to better equip EM students’ Chinese language proficiency, so as to increase their job advantage, smoother social integration into Hong Kong society, and to resolve the intergenerational poverty.postprin

Floor transfer test for assessing people with chronic stroke

published_or_final_versio

Passing on the mother tongue: implementation of the Hokkien curriculum for elementary schools in Taiwan

Conference Theme: When East Meets West: The Teaching and Learning of Reading and Writing in the Multilingual and Multicultural ContextTracing first the evolution of the island’s multilingual language education policy, this paper examines the implementation and implications of the Hokkien curriculum for elementary schools in Taiwan. Drawing upon qualitative data from currently available library materials and a recent ethnographic study, the paper surveys the strengths and challenges of the aforementioned curriculum in terms of rationale, design, actual implementation at school level and regional variation, while further exploring the development of school-based Hokkien curriculum in Taiwan’s elementary schools in relation to the contesting discourses of language endangerment and revitalization. The author argues that ethnic politics has continued to play a key role in curriculum decision-making in the second decade of Hokkien education, particularly in face of fierce competition with other local languages in the formal education system

Breaking the ethnic barriers: cultural translation in action

Session - Anthropologists in Different Careers: Human Resources, NGO and the Public SectorRoundtable TalkAs a biliteral, trilingual postcolonial society, Hong Kong is constantly in need of multilingual talents. This roundtable paper outlines the learning difficulties facing the ethnic minority (EM) adolescents, and seeks to answer a number of questions regarding the challenges of teaching Chinese as a second language to EM students in Hong Kong for professional purposes. (Original in Chinese

So Classical As It Is: A Critical Study of the Cantonese Translation of Literary Chinese Course Texts in Hong Kong Language

This paper aims to examine the Cantonese translation of the Literary Chinese texts in the featured book, and seeks to answer the following research questions: (1) Does the Cantonese translation of Literary Chinese prescribed texts in Hong Kong Language serve the purpose of making this “classical variant” of written Chinese more easily accessible to Hong Kong learners of the Chinese language? (2) Is such use of Cantonese script a viable replacement of the conventional Standard Modern Chinese translation, as claimed by the books’ authors? The current research is a document study based upon a close examination of selected texts from Hong Kong Language, which are triangulated with other works of the same genre/purpose and scholarly literature for further analysis using critical discourse analysis (CDA).The findings show that clear, precise, accurate Cantonese translations, like their counterparts in Standard Modern Chinese, in theory serves the purpose of making Literary Chinese more accessible to learners of the Chinese language speaking Cantonese as their mother tongue. Close to the verbal instructions given by teachers in Cantonese-medium Chinese language classrooms, the revision notes written in the Cantonese script presents verbatim correspondence to the imagined or mimicked teacher talk, and the explications matches the native speakers’ everyday language and local life. Nevertheless, such input would only be effective if the learners possess passive literacy of the Cantonese script

Character recognition strategies of CSL readers: a perspective on the role of orthographic awareness

PURPOSE: The study investigates the character recognition strategies of Chinese as a second language (CSL) readers (N=5) from a Hong Kong secondary school. METHOD: Both higher and lower proficiency level participants were given specific training on the think-aloud method before completing a 4-task, 27-question assessment test on orthographic presentation, character-meaning association and character-sound association, during which they were required to speak aloud their thought processes. An analysis of the data collected was conducted with reference to their cognitive activity and processing. RESULTS: The results show that orthographic awareness plays a determinant role in shaping the character recognition strategies of CSL readers. The higher level readers were able to discern components in a character and to identify flexible components, while making inferences and character-sound associations using clues from the character shapes along with their own orthographic knowledge and experiences. The lower level readers, with very limited orthographic knowledge while displaying avoidance behaviours, tended to make intuitive guesses which focused mainly on the stroke level of orthographic form with minimal combination of other character recognition strategies. Their inability to identify flexible components and high forgetting rate also contributed to the poor performance. CONCLUSIONS: An analysis of the results concludes that intensified training on Chinese components and form-sound-meaning associations, the use of mental lexicon, and contextualized learning are likely to enhance CSL readers’ ability to achieve successful recognition of Chinese characters, a prerequisite to accurate retrieval and organization of lexico-semantic information during the reading process

A Developmental Concern-based Intercultural Sensitivity Model of Teacher Change: New paradigms and practices

Oral Session: Education/ Psychology IIIn the past decade, Chinese language teachers in Hong Kong experienced a series of educational reforms, including curriculum reform and the more restricted quality assurance and new assessment mechanism (Education Bureau, 2000; 2005). They are expected to design and implement their school-based Chinese language curriculum, to use new teaching materials and strategies. As such teachers should readily receive new challenges and willing to make paradigm change. However, the current literature suggests that some teachers may not ready for, or even resist changes (e.g. Richardson, 1998). Guskey (2002; 2012) proposes a model of teacher change based on the argument that teachers will change their classroom practice with their participation of professional development program, while students’ learning outcomes will be improved leading to changes in teachers’ beliefs and attitudes. This study highlights the complicatedness of teacher change, while pointing out the key elements that helps facilitate teachers’ change and professional development is showing them how a new instructional approach works in their classroom with their students through demonstration. This provides the teachers with vivid experience and strong evidence, which lead to their voluntary adoption of the new teaching approach and change in their beliefs and attitudes after experiencing the resulting joy and benefits

The role of emotionality in teacher change: The case of Chinese language teachers in Hong Kong

In the past decade, Chinese language teachers in Hong Kong experienced a series of educational reforms, whereby they are expected to design and implement their own school-based Chinese language curriculum while using new teaching materials and strategies. Although they are supposed to be ready for new challenges and paradigm changes, the current literature suggests that some teachers are not ready for or even resist changes (e.g. Richardson 1998). Based on Guskey (1986), Hall et al. (1973) and Bennett (1993), this study highlights the complicatedness of teacher change by proposing an integrative, local adaptation of the three classic models, while pointing out key elements that help facilitate teachers’ change and how professional development is showing them how a new instructional approach works in their classroom through demonstration and practical sessions. This provides the teachers with vivid experience and convincing evidence, leading to their voluntary adoption of the approach and change in their beliefs and attitudes after witnessing the resulting effectiveness and feasibility

Striding through the storms: the politics of distance in HKUSU Public Statements during the Umbrella Revolution

ROS 269609 / Conference Theme: Functional Linguistic and Social Semiotic Approaches to the MediaPublic statements played a key part in the Umbrella Revolution (UR), the largest civil disobedience movement in Hong Kong’s history which was initiated by local students in 2014 to fight for “genuine” universal suffrage. The paper presents a text analysis of three public statements issued by The Hong Kong University Students’ Union (HKUSU) during the UR, and examines the recent changes of this public genre associated with the adoption of new media. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), the authors first discuss the field, tenor and mode of the texts in focus, as well as how the predominant use of classical allusions in their original Literary Chinese (wenyan) form served as a distancing strategy to clearly differentiate the declarant’s (i.e., the longest-established tertiary students’ organization in the territory) voice from that of the addressee (i.e., the general public and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government). Code-mixed texts, in which the highly sophisticated embedded “language” (Literary Chinese) was heavily infused into the comparatively profane matrix “language” (Standard Modern Chinese), giving rise to an atypical rhetorical style for the genre. A context of production temporally proximate yet culturally distant from the context of reception was thus created, during which a significant socio-semiotic distance (Lam, 2010) between the declarant and the addressee was engendered as a salient gesture of elitist nonconformity in the form of a “public-space dialogue” (Boyd, 2014). The authors further argue that the implied, quasi-interpersonal nature of the declarant-addressee dynamic was made possible by the preferred use of social media and online newspapers as means of publishing. The resulting spontaneous access to the public statements, and online user interactions, reshaped the textually unidirectional genre into “technologically–mediated public spaces” (Wodak & Wright, 2006) through manipulation and orchestration of semiotic resources

Revisiting Visual-Verbal Intersemiotic Complementarity: A Multimodal Case Study of a Literary Chinese Study Guide and Its Pedagogical Implications on Chinese as a Second Language

This paper revisits the concept of visual-verbal intersemiotic complementarity (Royce 1999a, 1999b, 2007) and examines the multimodal relations between images and texts in a Literary Chinese (LC, or wenyan, the spoken language of ancient China and written language until early 1920s) study guide targeting at local senior secondary students in Hong Kong, Learning Literary Chinese With Fun (Quwei Xue Guwen) (Fong & Ma 2015). Adopting Kress & Van Leeuwen’s (1996) grammar of visual design and Unsworth’s (2001, 2007) framework of multiliteracies in the classroom, the current research is a multimodal case study of Learning Literary Chinese With Fun grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Data analysis revealed that three modes, namely LC, Standard Modern Chinese Translation (SMCT) and Multiframe Cartoon (MFC), were intricately presented in a complementary manner. The “hidden” grammatical elements (e.g. subject), rhetorical devices (e.g. inversion), cultural contexts (e.g. rituals and artefacts) in the vertical LC original texts above the cartoon panels were in turn explained by the SMCT off-frame chapter introductions and in-frame dialogues and narratives, and illustrated by the three- to five-frame MFC. Such intersemiotic complementarity between the texts (LC and SMCT) and the images (MFC) has obvious pedagogical implications particularly in times of policy change when high-level Chinese as a second language (CSL) learners are required to learn LC as a compulsory part of the current curriculum, given that it facilitates understanding of the set texts at different levels of reading behaviours (Rose & Martin 2012; Shum 2014) with the shift in tenor and mode