published_or_final_version / Applied English Studies / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

Under the background of booming demands in international school programmes provided for heritage language Chinese speakers, teaching Chinese has become a challenge in balancing between promotions of heritage understanding and incorporation of international awareness, so as to comply the aims of International Baccalaureate curriculum. The research initiates with reviewing a series of literature related to interpretation of international mindedness and cultural understanding, international education and Chinese teaching in international context. This qualitative research specifically focuses on teachers and students in an IB diploma programme affiliated to a local Hong Kong school, aiming to find out the practice and perception of the participates in and towards Chinese as a heritage language teaching and learning down to the implementation of international mindedness. Student questionnaires, interviews and observation are included into methods of data collecting. In conclusion, international mindedness is seen as a pathway rather than a goal in Chinese lessons, and one important concept in thinking. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Learning Mathematics in English is proved to have posed considerable challenges for many Hong Kong students who enroll in an EMI (English as the medium of instruction) curriculum. Solving Math word problems in English, still less, poses even greater challenges due to the high language demand involved for ESL students to understand the verbal text and conduct problem solving. Studies have shown that students generally perform worse in solving Math word problems than in solving problems with purely mathematical form. And this difficulty is even more pronounced for English learners. To help Hong Kong ESL students enhance their Math problem-solving skill in English, the current study conducts a genre analysis of the Math word problems chosen from four EMI mathematics textbooks most widely used in junior secondary classrooms. The analysis is a corpus-based one consisting of a linguistic analysis of the language moves and linguistic features in verbal text and a visual analysis of the Math visual presentations as to how they work with verbal text in meaning making. In the study, the linguistic analysis identifies 6 language moves and move patterns commonly used in the word problems, with move-specific linguistic features also examined to help students better distinguish each move. Since linguistic features vary greatly among content areas, linguistic features associated with each content area are also examined to cater to content-based difference. On the other hand, the visual analysis identifies 5 types of visual presentations in the word problems examined. By quantitatively calculating the number of each visual type, the study identifies the dominant visual type(s) in different content areas and further investigates each visual type’s visual-linguistic relationship according to the extent to which these visual take on the role of verbal text in meaning making. With the above findings of the linguistic and visual analysis of Math word problems, the study generates important pedagogical implication for the EMI Math learning and teaching in the junior secondary context and contributes to the development of language across curriculum in Hong Kong schools. Limitations of the study are discussed at the end of dissertation, followed by a list of implications for future research. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Reading is an important capability to assist in learning. When students are promoted to higher levels at primary school, they have to read more informative texts instead of narrative texts. A number of studies have indicated that many primary school students have difficulty comprehending informative texts. The ways in which teachers structure lesson content and students experience the lesson are important in helping students understand informative texts in terms of genres and genre features. To help students take on the challenges arising from reading informative texts, teachers play a vital role in bringing students to encounter critical aspects of understanding informative texts and make it more possible for students’ discernment happen. In the light of this, this study aims to investigate how structures of lessons and patterns of variation and invariance affect the learning outcomes of students’ understanding of genres and the genre features of informative texts, and even their future learning. This study features a design-based approach to two rounds of trial lessons. Phenomenography and variation theory are adopted as the theoretical framework. In the first round of trial lessons, there were 38 students from a primary 6 class divided into 2 groups. One group was given a lesson which was structured both sequentially and hierarchically. The lesson for the other group was, however, framed in a hierarchical structure only. The former lesson emphasized the use of similar examples while the latter focused on the use of different examples to teach students the meaning of genre features of informative texts. In the second round, there were 39 students from a primary 5 class also divided into 2 groups. Although the structures of the lessons for the two groups were similar to those in the first round, the object of learning was to enhance students’ understanding of informative texts and the delayed post-test was conducted only in this round. The students in both rounds of trial lessons, who were from the same school, were taught by the same teacher. The data was analysed and triangulated with the post-lesson interview data and verbatim lesson record. The students’ different learning outcomes stemmed from the different structures of the lessons and the adoption of the patterns of variation and invariance. The students who had more opportunities to encounter the patterns of variation and invariance serving as contrasts tended to perform better than those who did not. The appropriate teaching arrangements enhanced students’ understanding of genre awareness and genre features, and contributed to generation of learning. The findings of this study support variation theory as a powerful pedagogical tool for improving students’ understanding of informative texts and enabling students to generate new learning after teacher instruction. One implication of the findings for teachers is that appropriate teaching arrangements, including the structure of a lesson and patterns of variation and invariance, are of paramount importance. As a result of such arrangements, students are more likely to develop a powerful way of reading informative texts. Teachers are instrumental in preparing the necessary conditions of learning. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Li, Xiaoqing. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-179). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

高國威. / 據手稿本影印. / Thesis (M.A.)--香港中文大學硏究院敎育學部. / Ju shou gao ben ying yin. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [1-16] (3rd group)). / Gao Guowei. / Thesis (M.A.)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue yan jiu yuan jiao yu xue bu. / 引言 --- p.1-10 / Chapter 第一章 --- 緒論：背景資料 / Chapter 第一節 --- 生物學在中國之發展 --- p.11-20 / Chapter 第二節 --- 生物學在中國中學課程中的發展情況 --- p.21-32 / Chapter 第三節 --- 近期國外中學生物科課程介紹 --- p.33-48 / Chapter 第二章 --- 研究方法 / Chapter 第一節 --- 研究目的 --- p.54-55 / Chapter 第二節 --- 各時期的劃分 --- p.56-59 / Chapter 第三節 --- 比較的範圍 --- p.59-63 / Chapter 第四節 --- 資料搜集 --- p.64-69 / Chapter 第三章 --- 1949年至1966年中學生物課程開設情況的介紹和分析 / Chapter 第一節 --- 1952年 至 1958年 --- p.71-86 / Chapter 第二節 --- 1958年 至 1962年 --- p.86-98 / Chapter 第三節 --- 1963年 至 1966年 --- p.99-113 / Chapter 第四章 --- 1967年至1977年中學生物課程開設情況的介紹和分析 --- p.121-141 / Chapter 第五章 --- 1978年至現今中學生物課程開設情況的介紹和分析 / Chapter 第一節 --- 1978年 至 1981年 --- p.142-164 / Chapter 第二節 --- 1982年 至 現今 --- p.165-177 / Chapter 第六章 --- 1949年以來各時期中學生物科課程的比較 / Chapter 第一節 --- 各時期生物教學的目標和意義 --- p.183-193 / Chapter 第二節 --- 各時期的中學生物科課程內容 --- p.194-203 / Chapter 第三節 --- 各時期生物科教學實況及社會配合情況 --- p.203-210 / Chapter 第七章 --- 影響中國中學生物科課程的因素 --- p.215-235 / Chapter 第八章 --- 總結 / Chapter 第一節 --- 綜合結論 --- p.239-244 / Chapter 第二節 --- 建議─對中國中學生物科課程的展望 --- p.245-258 / 附錄一 --- p.259-260 / 參攷資料 --- p.261

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy