published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

In the Reform Proposals for the Education in Hong Kong published in 2000, it was clearly stated that the priotity of education in the 21st century should be ―to enable our students to enjoy learning, enhance their effectiveness in communication and develop their creativity and sense of commitment‖. This paper aims to respond to two of the aspects — the enhancement of effectiveness in communication and the development of students’ creativity. For years, schools have focused on promoting students’ creavity in reading and writing, but not in speaking. In fact, among the various language skills, ‘speaking’ is the skill students have to demonstrate the most in their daily interaction. Compared to reading and writing, the ability to express one‘s views verbally in a creative manner can give rise to more direct interaction, acting as a genuine reflection of a student’s wisdom, knowledge, capability and potential. It is also a lifelong skill that students can apply when they join the workforce in the future. It is therefore meaningful to place emphasis on cultivating students’ creativity in speaking. This research aims to explore the correlation between the Chinese oral proficiency and creative ability of senior secondary students in Hong Kong based on existing theories on the development of creativity and speaking. Target participants, recruited from two aided secondary schools of different abilities, receive training on speaking and creative thinking, and analysis is done adopting both the quantitative and qualitative approaches. Students of each school are first randomly divided into two groups — the experimental group and control group. Students of both groups are required to take a pre-test and a post-test, as well as complete a set of questionnaire in each session. Results obtained are compared and contrasted to gauge the changes in their oral proficiency and creative ability. In between the tests, the experiemental group receives seven experimental design lectures on News and Report, one of the elective modules of the NSS curriculum in Chinese Language Education, while the control group receives lectures on News and Report which reference on the samples from Education Bureau only, no experimental design lectures will be delivered. In the end, the three teachers involved in the study were interviewed, during which the teachers offered their observations on the change in the students’ learning behaviour and attitude. Based on the data collected from the administration of tests, questionnaires and interviews, the following conclusions are made: first, there is a correlation between oral proficiency and creative ability; second, students’ attitude and values have a direct impact on the effectiveness of the module; third, the Speaking and Creativity Assessment rubric used in the study proved to be successful in assessing the said abilities, enhancing learning effectiveness. Through the analysis of data collected, this research contributed to Chinese Language Education to some extent, especially in the teaching of oral proficiency and creativity. It opened up a new set of criteria for the assessment of creative speaking ability from different perspectives to ensure objectivity of results, offered diversified course materials that can effectively raise the standard of students’ speaking and critical thinking ability. 香港在2000 年教育制度改革建議中明確指出教育首要目標是培養學生成為「樂於學習、善於溝通、勇於承擔、敢於創新」的新一代，其中，本研究特別回應「善於溝通」和「敢於創新」這兩個重點。過往，學校及教師多注重學生閱讀能力及寫作能力創意的培養，而忽略說話能力的創意訓練。其實，在各種語文能力中，「說話」是學生日常生活最主要的表達能力。口語表達比閱讀及寫作語言起著更直接的交流及溝通作用，是一個人智慧、知識、能力、素質的綜合體現，是學生立足社會、終生受用的語文能力。因此語文教學以創意思維培養學生的說話能力是有實在意義的。 為探索本港高中學生口語表達和創意能力的相互關係，本研究以創造力(Creativity) 和說話能力訓練的理論為依據，對上述課題展開試驗及分析工作。本計劃以香港兩所不同程度的津貼中學學生的說話能力為研究對象， 施行融合創意和說話能力訓練的實驗教學模式。本研究採用量化和質化方式為主要研究的方法。首先， 每所學校的研究對象隨機分為實驗組 (Experimental Group) 和控制組 (Control Group)。兩組對象分別安排前測和後測來量度實驗前後的數據變化。在前測及後測之間， 實驗組將會進行結合了創意思維訓練元素的中國語文選修單元「新聞與報道」共七節課的教學，從而探究這次實驗課能否提高學生創意說話能力學習的成效。而控制組卻不會在實驗教學施行期間安排進行任何實驗教學，有關的課堂教學，只按照原本學校的「新聞與報道」課程進行。在公平的原則下，所有控制組的學生會在暑假補回教授有關的實驗課程知識。本研究同時在兩班實驗組學生發出前後兩次的問卷調查，以檢視受試者的說話能力及創意能力的變化。最後，訪問兩所受試學校參與研究的三位老師，以深入瞭解學生整體的學習行為和態度情意的改變。 透過分析實驗教學資料、問卷調查數據和訪談結果，本研究主要有以下幾方面的總結：第一，確立說話能力和創意能力的相互關係。第二，學生的學習態度和品德情意直接影響課程的學習成效。第三，本研究所採用的「說話及創意能力評量表」能客觀評估學生的說話及創意能力，促進學習效能。經各種測試及結果分析，本研究對中國語文教育作出了一些貢獻，尤其是在融合說話與創意能力方面，以提高學生說話和思考水平；開發創意說話能力的評核標準，包含多角度的評審考量為評核精神，以客觀的等級描述為評量依據；提供多元化的創意說話課程設計，有助提升學生的創意說話能力表現等多方面的意義。 / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Education

published_or_final_version / Speech and Hearing Sciences / Master / Master of Science in Audiology

The main objective of the present thesis was to examine whether and how do different aspects of oral language skills have important contribution for the development of reading comprehension among young Chinese children. In Study 1, a three-wave longitudinal study (from K2 to P1) was conducted with 91 Chinese children, to whom measures of oral language (vocabulary, grammar and narrative discourse), word-level skills (phonological, orthographic, and morphological skills), and word reading were administered at all three time points, and reading comprehension at K3 and P1. This study found that K2 oral language skills explained considerable variance in subsequent word reading and reading comprehension two years later, and their longitudinal contribution appeared to be more important than that of K2 word-level skills. Moreover, it was found that the first-graders showed rudimentary abilities in some higher-order text comprehension skills in spoken language (e.g., sentential ambiguity detection and monitoring of textual coherence), and these language skills were highly associated with children’s reading comprehension. Results of multiple regression analyses showed that these skills had unique contribution to reading comprehension at P1 over and above that of word reading, word-level skills, and general oral language skills (i.e., vocabulary, grammatical and narrative discourse skills). The longitudinal data further demonstrated the unique prediction of sentential ambiguity detection over time. Overall, SEM analyses revealed that although the role of word reading ability was prominent to beginning reading comprehension, children’s early oral language skills at preschool were found to make an independent path to later reading comprehension through facilitating the subsequent development of higher-order comprehension skills at both sentence- and discourse-level. Since Study 1 demonstrated the importance of sentential ambiguity detection to reading comprehension, Study 2 focused on examining the emerging development of this skill in Chinese children from K2 to P1. A phase model was proposed which hypothesized that children gradually acquired the three sub-skills of sentential ambiguity detection (i.e., homophone detection, lexical ambiguity detection in sentence, and structural ambiguity detection in sentence) through successive phases. Study 2 further demonstrated the contribution of vocabulary, grammatical, and lexical compounding skills for the early acquisition of ambiguity detection in Chinese children. In Study 3, one of its aims was to determine the extent to which different kinds of preschool cognitive skills significantly predicted later word reading difficulties at the end of first grade. The results highlighted the important predicting role of meaning-related cognitive skills (i.e., vocabulary, lexical compounding, and homophone detection skills) in addition to that of phonological and orthographic skills. Apart from focusing on children’s word reading problems, Study 3 further used K-mean cluster analysis to identify a group of children at first grade, whose reading comprehension fall short of their average or good word reading ability. It was found that these unexpected poor comprehenders showed weaknesses in skills that are specifically related to text comprehension: sentential ambiguity detection, comprehension monitoring, and working memory. The practical implications for early literacy instructional approaches and early identification of children with reading difficulties were discussed. / published_or_final_version / Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Language Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This thesis examines the results of a large-scale sociolinguistic study on the use of English in two universities in China. The aim of the thesis is to determine the sociolinguistic realities of the use of English in higher education in China. The universities were selected on the basis of their unique status in China’s higher education hierarchy. One university was a private institute reliant on student fees for its income, and the other a state-funded university under the supervision of the Chinese Ministry of Education. A sociolinguistic survey was conducted involving some 490 respondents at these universities between early 2012 and mid-2013. It was specifically aimed at describing the use of the English language in the formal education of students. The study reports on the status and functions of English at the universities, as well as the attitudes of various stakeholders towards English (and other languages). It also examines their beliefs about English. English is considered in a number of contexts: first, the context of language contact, of English alongside other languages and language varieties on the two university campuses; second, of English as part of the linguistic worlds of Chinese students who switch between languages in their daily lives, both in their education as well as their private lives; and third, of the spread and use of English in terms of the physical and virtual movement of people across spaces. The findings of the study indicate that the increasing use of English in the formal education at these universities is having an impact on the ways in which Chinese students are learning their course materials, and even more notably in the myriad ways these students are using multiple languages to negotiate their everyday lives. As university students in China become increasingly bilingual, their ability to move across spaces is shown to increase, both in the ‘real’ world, as well as in their Internet and entertainment lives. / Linguistics / D. Lit. et Phil. (Linguistics)

This thesis examines the results of a large-scale sociolinguistic study on the use of English in two universities in China. The aim of the thesis is to determine the sociolinguistic realities of the use of English in higher education in China. The universities were selected on the basis of their unique status in China’s higher education hierarchy. One university was a private institute reliant on student fees for its income, and the other a state-funded university under the supervision of the Chinese Ministry of Education. A sociolinguistic survey was conducted involving some 490 respondents at these universities between early 2012 and mid-2013. It was specifically aimed at describing the use of the English language in the formal education of students. The study reports on the status and functions of English at the universities, as well as the attitudes of various stakeholders towards English (and other languages). It also examines their beliefs about English. English is considered in a number of contexts: first, the context of language contact, of English alongside other languages and language varieties on the two university campuses; second, of English as part of the linguistic worlds of Chinese students who switch between languages in their daily lives, both in their education as well as their private lives; and third, of the spread and use of English in terms of the physical and virtual movement of people across spaces. The findings of the study indicate that the increasing use of English in the formal education at these universities is having an impact on the ways in which Chinese students are learning their course materials, and even more notably in the myriad ways these students are using multiple languages to negotiate their everyday lives. As university students in China become increasingly bilingual, their ability to move across spaces is shown to increase, both in the ‘real’ world, as well as in their Internet and entertainment lives. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)