This study explored a group of mainland Chinese research postgraduate students’ attitudes to using English in their current academic and daily lives in Hong Kong. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected. An interview survey with seven participants was carried out to seek in-depth information about participants’ perceptions of using English in Hong Kong. Based on the major themes found in the preliminary analysis of the interview survey, an online questionnaire survey was designed and sent out to investigate a much larger group of mainland research students' English language use experiences in Hong Kong. 　　The results revealed that this group of students generally had positive attitudes to using English in their academic lives in Hong Kong while had relatively negative attitudes to their experiences of daily English language use. Their perceptions of the English of different groups of people in Hong Kong were varied although they all opined that English was an important language in the educational, commercial and other formal settings in Hong Kong. The pedagogical implications for mainland research students, their academic supervisors and university language policy makers are discussed and future research directions are suggested. / published_or_final_version / Applied English Studies / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

The notion of literacy in the 21st century has changed with the emergence of advanced technologies. We can no longer treat written language as the sole resource in contemporary literacy. The advancement of technology has led to some fundamental changes in the ways we receive and produce texts. Theories of literacy that underpin the concept of writing need to be reconsidered both explicitly and implicitly. This paper reports on four case studies of primary school children in Hong Kong, focusing on their emerging digital competencies when engaging with digital text. The study investigates how the participating children engaged with digital text in the context of their out-of-school technology use. Each was observed to have developed a set of digital competencies in their receptive and productive engagements to deal with information on screens. Understanding how these competencies extended into their English language classrooms was explicated based on the data that emerged from the study. The study results identify five emerging competencies acquired by the children from their extra-school digital practices. Two of these were not extended into the children’s schoolwork – a reflection on the emphasis on mono-modal language learning in the class setting. At the heart of this research are two research questions: (1) What digital literacy practices emerge from the participating children’s out-of-school technology use? (2) How have these practices been extended to school activities? These research questions guided the methodological choice of the current study. The research was conducted with a view to understanding the understudied phenomena in their naturalistic settings. Different data collection methods were applied to uncover the emerging skills in the participants’ receptive and productive engagement with digital text inductively and iteratively. The skills utilize but are additional to listening, speaking, reading and writing, and involve frequent use of visuals, dynamic information and interaction through digital text. Such skills are categorized in the literature as viewing and representing. A detailed examination of the each of the five competencies led to the development of a framework of viewing and representing skills used by the participants during their receptive and productive engagement with information. These skills apply the five competencies in two different processes. The framework serves as a basis for recommendations for curriculum review, suitable pedagogical strategies and classroom learning resources that English language educators may utilize to facilitate development of students’ viewing and representing skills through the use of the five competencies. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Education

The writing center provides individualized instructions for students to improve their writing. Though a lot of writing center research focuses on English as a Second Language (ESL) students, there is no study on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students in mainland China context. This study attempts to bridge that research gap by examining writing center interaction and its succeeding influence on students’ revision. The study examines six writing center interactions by using conversation analysis to reveal interactional patterns. Students’ pre-session text and revised text are analyzed linguistically by adopting discourse analysis. Participants’ interpretations are compiled from interview data to provide their perceptions of the writing center. The findings that emerged from conversation analysis of tutorial transcriptions, discourse analysis of students’ writing, and the interview data for this study include: (1) In writing center interaction, the tutor is the dominant speaker while the student is the subordinate participant. (2) Institutional context, limited knowledge about students, and Chinese culture of learning affect the tutor-tutee interaction. (3) Issues covered in the interaction become the focus of students’ revision. (4) Lexicogrammatical issues are the focus of writing center interaction and students’ revision. (5) Students speak highly of the interaction and tutors’ help. This research provides a thorough description of the writing center interaction, its subsequent effects on students’ revision, and students’ perceptions on the interaction. The implications of this study include: (a) eliciting more information at the beginning of the interaction; (b) adopting flexible tutoring approach; (c) encouraging students to take active participation; and (d) providing training for tutors. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Bilingual and multilingual research has mainly focused on segmental phonology, vocabulary and syntactic structures. The acquisition of native-like prosodic patterns has often been taken for granted. A study of prosodic features is particularly relevant since many children born into families of non-native speakers acquire English as a first or second language alongside the family or local language. Previous research has mainly identified general trends and found that children as a group are mainly accurate in their comprehension or production, but few studies have tried to go into detail and examine prosodic features in individual children. This thesis investigates the acquisition of prosodic parameters in two multilingual children, aged 10;5 and 9;5, learning English alongside Standard Chinese and Cantonese. Their data are compared with data from monolingual native-speakers and Cantonese speakers of English (L2 learners). Controlled experiments using minimal pairs and testing both comprehension and production of prosodic phrasing (“chocolate biscuits and milk” vs. “chocolate, biscuits and milk”) and compound vs phrasal stress (“hot dog” vs. “hot dog”) were conducted with each respondent. Praat phonetic analyses of the output and acoustic measurements were combined with auditory observations and listeners’ disambiguation. Comprehension was tested in identification tasks drawing on prosodic cues only. Results indicated that the multilingual children were less successful in using pitch movements to signal prosodic boundaries and convey compound and phrasal rhythmic patterns that the monolingual children. In terms of segmental and pause durations, and final-syllable lengthening, both multilingual children showed more consistency in their production. This supports previous monolingual research (Peeppé et al., 2000; Danbovicová et al., 2004) that temporal cues are more systematically used and more reliable disambiguating factors, which many contribute to their earlier acquisition (Vihman, 1996). In addition, the ability to accurately produce rhythmic patterns of compounds and phrases may develop at an even later stage in multilingual that in monolingual acquisition (Atkinson-King, 1973; Vogel & Raimy, 2002). Compared to L2 learners, the multilingual children have a well-differentiated English phonology with subtle evidence for language transfer (e.g., strengthening of unstressed vowels and tone on unstressed syllables) and deceleration (e.g., less stable or consistent production of single-stressed compounds). The L2 learners, although sensitive to contrasts in pitch, duration and lengthening, many never fully develop the ability to manipulate prosodic cues in a native-like way. Comprehension tests reveal that the relationship between perception and production of the same feature is no straightforward. Good perception does not mean accurate and unambiguous production while unsuccessful perception does not imply inaccurate and ambiguous production while unsuccessful perception does not imply inaccurate and ambiguous output. This thesis examines children’s perception and production of prosody, and contributes some detailed insights into prosodic development of monolingual, multilingual, and L2 learners. The results not only have implications for theoretical conceptualizations of language acquisition, but also provide relevant information for language instructors and testing specialists who develop assessment materials for children. / published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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