Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education

Hong Kong’s ‘trilingual and biliterate’ language policy (TaB, 三語兩文) is almost as old as the special administrative region (SAR) itself. Through free education and language support measures in school, students are expected to be conversant in English and Putonghua in addition to Cantonese, and be able to read and understand written Chinese and English. After being implemented for over two decades, however, there are signs that most students’ language standards in Chinese and English fall short of the TaB target, as measured by the public examination results of successive generations of secondary school leavers. Designed with essentially Cantonese-dominant Hongkongers in mind, the TaB policy consists of many measures, with the ‘medium of instruction streaming policy’ introduced since September 1998 being the most controversial. Driven by the twin principles of monolingual English-medium instruction (EMI) and ‘no language mixing allowed’, secondary schools are divided into two streams. Stringent requirements must be met before a school could claim to be an EMI school. According to this ‘late immersion’ model for students aged 11–12 at secondary level, every year about 30 percent of the primary school leavers are allocated to an EMI school. Following Li (Multilingual Hong Kong: languages, literacies and identities. Springer, Cham, 2017), this paper will first discuss why the TaB target is such a tall order for Cantonese-dominant students by reviewing the relevant literature along five inter-related dimensions: contrastive linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and instructional strategies and bilingual pedagogies. I will then examine the SAR government’s language support measures to assess their effectiveness and explore possible alternatives. The paper will end with a number of recommendations, which together constitute an LPP (language policy and planning) roadmap for improving the chance with which the TaB policy is likely to produce more positive outcomes. (i) To re-prioritize the investment and extent of language support by strengthening the quality of language input at the key stages of learning from age 3–9, which in curriculum terms correspond with K1–P3; (ii) To use Cantonese as the medium of instruction for teaching all subjects except English and Putonghua as separate subjects at preschool (K1–K3, age 3–6); (iii) To explore the possibility of implementing total immersion in Putonghua for three years at lower primary level (P1–P3, age 6–9); (iv) To abandon the ‘maximum exposure, no mixing’ dogma in secondary education and to encourage basic and action research in bilingual pedagogies and instructional strategies informed by Content-and-language integrated learning (CLIL); (v) To attract academically bright and linguistically gifted students to receive professional training and be prepared and committed for a career in language teaching; and (vi) To encourage civil servants of various government offices, schoolteachers, and university staff to initiate a ‘speak English/Putonghua where we can’ campaign. For these policy measures to be successfully implemented and bear fruit, apart from careful planning, there ought to be strong leadership from within the government and the education sector, plus mechanisms for coordinating concerted actions on the part of various groups of stakeholders, notably teachers, school principals, educationalists, and experts of language teaching and learning in academia.

Việc đánh giá một cách hiệu quả các chương trình giáo dục có thể cung cấp những hướng dẫn quý giá cho các nhà quản lý giáo dục đang quan tâm đến các kế hoạch nâng cao nội dung. Trong nghiên cứu này, chúng tôi tập trung vào các khóa học tiếng Anh chuyên ngành (ESP) cho sinh viên ngành kỹ thuật, nhằm đánh giá hiệu quả của việc giảng dạy tiếng Anh kỹ thuật trong bối cảnh học thuật của Iran. Sử dụng khung đánh giá kết hợp, nghiên cứu đã khám phá hiệu quả của các khóa học bằng cách tìm hiểu quan điểm của giảng viên ESP và sinh viên kỹ thuật về ba lĩnh vực chính bao gồm sự đáp ứng nhu cầu, tính xác thực của nội dung và sự tự chủ của người học. Mục tiêu thứ hai của nghiên cứu là xem xét liệu có sự khác biệt đáng kể nào giữa sinh viên và giảng viên về quan điểm của họ đối với các khoá học đang được điều tra hay không. Để đạt được mục tiêu đó, một bảng câu hỏi do nhà nghiên cứu tự thiết kế đã được phát cho 796 sinh viên kỹ thuật và 54 giảng viên ESP được chọn ngẫu nhiên từ 20 trường đại học tại Iran. Phân tích mô tả dữ liệu khảo sát cho thấy sự đồng thuận chung về sự không đáp ứng một số nhu cầu của người học như những nhu cầu liên quan đến mục tiêu học tập, năng lực sản xuất, hệ thống giám sát và cơ sở vật chất giáo dục. Ngoài ra, hai nhóm tham gia có quan điểm khác biệt đáng kể về tính xác thực của nội dung giảng dạy cũng như sự đáp ứng của các nhu cầu mục tiêu. Kết quả nghiên cứu có thể giúp các nhà chức trách địa phương điều chỉnh phương pháp giảng dạy ESP hiện tại ở Iran nhằm phù hợp với nhu cầu chính đáng của sinh viên.

Increasing interaction in large online classes is a challenge that many teachers are facing in the post-pandemic era. This study, rooted in Garrison et al.’s CoI (Community of Inquiry) framework, employs both quantitative and qualitative methods to explore what a teacher can do in large online literature classes to promote interaction by way of enhancing teaching presence. The correlation and regression analysis of the questionnaire survey indicates that the teacher’s strategies lead to high levels of teaching, social and cognitive presence, and in turn facilitate students’ online interaction, resulting in their strong sense of satisfaction. Besides, it suggests teaching presence has stronger relationship with cognitive presence than social presence. In addition, social and cognitive presences are strong predictors for learning outcomes which account for 68% of the explained variance in this study. Students’ online interaction in the form of postings show that they are more cognitively engaged rather than socially involved, which implies that students are more focused on the construction of knowledge rather than try to be connected in the community. The limited peer interaction in spite of students’ acknowledgement that peer interaction plays a unique role in pushing them towards better understanding of the texts poses the teacher another challenge for enhancing social presence.

This special issue sets out to revisit major bilingual and multilingual education policy and planning issues in key cities across the dynamic Greater Bay Area (GBA) of China (including Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macau), as informed by the emerging insights from translanguaging theory (Li in Appl Linguist 39(1):9–30, 2018). Specifically, contributions are invited from the GBA and beyond to trace the milestone developments of relevant language policy and planning (LPP) initiatives featuring governmental policies on the language of instruction (e.g., English as Medium of Instruction, Chinese as Medium of Instruction) and the daily use of multiple linguistic resources or repertoires (e.g., language learner's L1 or mother tongue) in foreign/second language classrooms and/or in content-based classroom instruction. As such, major papers in the special issue not only set out to provide historical and analytical reviews of these related LPP issues across Hong Kong, Macau, and Guangdong Province but also reflect upon the language use and behaviors of the residents, showcasing their identity and attitudes and ideological stance toward the multiple languages that are being taught or used in daily life. Toward the end, we outline our research agendas for future endeavors in broader domains in the GBA and beyond through the translanguaging analytical tools. Overall, our position is that the GBA presents itself as an evolving, complex, and superdiverse zone of “Translanguaging Spaces” within which key LPP issues may need to be reconceptualized and implemented in such a way so as to fully reflect the dynamic and fluid multilingual, multicultural, and multisemiotic lived reality of the residents in this megapolis region.

The EULALIA (Enhancing University Language courses with an App powered by game-based learning and tangible user interface activities) project aimed to enhance the learning methodologies of four university language courses for Erasmus students in Italy, Malta, Poland and Spain by developing innovative and effective learning tools based on mobile and game-based learning paradigms and the use of tangible user interfaces. This study focuses on Malta by providing an in-depth view of the impact of game-based applications on enhancing international adult learning of Maltese as a second language (ML2). The findings encourage international adult students to learn ML2 through a game-based application to aid in increasing cultural awareness and better communication with locals. As part of the methodology, pre-surveys and post-surveys were used on a test group comprising 28 pre-surveyed and 9 post-surveyed ML2 adult learners who used the app and a reference group of 24 pre-surveyed and 23 post-surveyed ML2 learners who did not use the app. The results revealed that according to the participants, game-based learning did not improve cognitive function even though the learners were more engaged in language activities, and thus could process and absorb a wider range of information. The research found that game-based learning did not have a statistically significant effect on adult learners’ language proficiency and digital skills.