Conference Theme: Research into Practice in the Four-year curriculumOut-of-class learning will become a large component of all English courses in the new curriculum at
HKU. However, experience shows it is particularly difficult to provide out-of-class speaking
opportunities. This paper reports on a collaborative project by the Centre for Applied English Studies
and the Centre of Development and Resources for Students (both at HKU) which recruits students
who are native- or expert-speakers of English to volunteer their time to provide face-to-face speaking
opportunities for other students of the university. This form of peer-tutoring has its origins both in
tandem learning (Voller & Pickard 1996 through to Schwienhorst 2009) and in the development of
Learning Commons (see for example, learningcommons.sfu.ca and Demeter 2011). The HKU
programme has become popular with students at all levels of proficiency because it has sufficient
flexibility to offer: confidence raising for anxious speakers, ad hoc tutoring for those needing
improvement, natural language interaction for higher level speakers and an opportunity for highly
local knowledge exchange between the tutors and tutees (the development of Knowledge Exchange
is a theme that is currently being strongly promoted by the UGC). Using data collected through
questionnaires and focus groups this presentation reports on the perceived benefits of the scheme
both for tutors and tutees, and suggests ways to facilitate such a scheme in other institutions.published_or_final_versio
