Articles--Abstracts
are found after the list of articles.
Benchmarking the benchmark: Assessing the fit of a new test with its
target population of teachers of English in Hong Kong
David Coniam and Peter Falvey
The
relation of learning styles to language learning outcomes: An empirical study
Jie Li and Xiaoqing Qin
Students’
needs and teachers’ dilemmas: A case of one university
Junju Wang
Chinese-structured
English of EFL nursing pre-professionals: the case at a college of technology
in Taiwan
Susan Shiou-mai Su
Code-switching
as an Index of Language Shift? A case study of a young Chinese imigrant in New Zealand
Shanjiang Yu and Catherine Elder
Reviews
Colin Barron: Thomas Clayton (2000). Education and the politics of language: Hegemony and
pragmatism in Cambodia, 1979-1989. CERC Studies in Comparative Education 8. Hong Kong.
Geoff Smith:
Bolton K.
(2002). Hong Kong English: Autonomy and
creativity. Hong Kong University Press.
Abstracts Volume 8, Number 1
Benchmarking the benchmark: Assessing the fit of a new
test with its target population of teachers of English in Hong Kong
David Coniam
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Peter Falvey
The University of Hong Kong
Abstract
The context for this paper is the English language benchmarking
initiative in Hong Kong – a Government move to
establish minimum standards of language ability for language teachers in
secondary schools. This paper examines the sample of English language teaching
test takers who participated in the piloting of the assessment instruments for
the benchmark test – Pilot Benchmark
Assessment (English), or PBAE. After providing
background to the Hong Kong language benchmarking initiative, the paper outlines the
PBAE pilot study. As the benchmark assessment instruments were completely new,
the discussion in the paper centres on the inclusion of a separate set of
already-calibrated multiple-choice items in the PBAE against which the new
benchmark instruments could be compared. These items, which are calibrated
against a representative number of Hong Kong secondary school
students, include a subset of the items that also formed part of two local universities’ entrance tests for applicants
to Postgraduate Certificate in Education programmes in English language
teaching. The paper describes the PBAE test takers’ performance on these
calibrated items. It is argued that as levels of achievement by candidates in
both the PBAE and on the Postgraduate Certificate in Education entrance tests
are similar, levels of ability, as determined by the benchmark tests, can therefore
be compared with the whole cohort of Hong Kong English language teachers.
The relation of learning styles to language learning
outcomes: An empirical study
Jie Li李洁 and Xiaoqing Qin秦晓晴
Huazhong University of Science
and Technology
Abstract
The present study set out to investigate the
relationship between learning styles of a group of Chinese EFL students and
their language learning outcomes. The subjects comprised 187 second-year non-English
major students who entered two universities in Wuhan in the fall of 2000. The
Chinese version of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Form G (MBTI-G), was used to
assess the students’ learning styles and the subjects’ English scores on the
objective questions of the final tests in the first semester of the second
academic year were adopted as the measure of language learning outcomes.
The
descriptive statistics revealed that the students were almost equally
distributed on the Thinking-Feeling scales and were slightly introverted,
fairly sensing and judging-oriented. Significant gender difference has been
observed on the Extraversion-Introversion scales and no significant major
difference has been found on any of the four MBTI dimensions. The stepwise multiple
regression analysis demonstrated a positive association between the Judging
scale and language learning outcomes. However, the small proportion of the
variance explained by this learning style variable seemed to suggest that
learning styles were only weakly or indirectly related to language learning
outcomes. The educational implications
of these findings for foreign language teaching, learning and testing are
discussed, as are suggestions for future research.
Students’ needs and teachers’
dilemmas: case of one university
Junju Wang
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Abstract
This
study examined the current College English teaching at one university in China through questionnaires, interviews, and classroom
observations. In order to gather data, questionnaires were distributed to 200
students, interviews were conducted with 30 teachers, and 20 classes taught by
the subject teachers were observed on a non-participant basis. The results of
the study show that while students need to improve their oral communicative
ability, teachers are restricted in their teaching having to make difficult
choices between the syllabus requirements, the testing system, and students’
need. This paper concludes that English language teaching in China is at a transitional phase from the transmission of
language knowledge to the development of communicative language skills. Some
tentative suggestions are given at the end of this paper as to how the present
situation can be improved.
Chinese-structured English of
EFL nursing pre-professionals: the case at a college of technology in Taiwan
Susan Shiou-mai Su
Chang Gung Institute of Technology, Taiwan
Abstract
Writing
nurses’ notes is routine for nurses in hospitals. In Taiwan, although nurses in training are given
the option of writing either in English or Chinese, they tend to write nurses’
notes in both English and Chinese; they code switch and code mix at the
sentence level. In this paper it is
argued that a major linguistic feature of the student nurses’ notes is their
use of Chinese-structured code-switched writing, which is a type of
inter-language, and this has various pedagogical implications for curriculum
developers. It is suggested that vocabulary
which frequently appear in a nursing context and sentence structures like verb-omitted,
subject omitted sentences should be emphasized in a tightly focused, product-oriented
ESP curriculum for nursing pre-professionals in an EFL context such as in
Taiwan.
Code-switching as an Index of Language shift?
A case study of a young Chinese immigrant in New Zealand
Shanjiang Yu
Auckland University of
Technology
Catherine Elder
The University of Auckland
Abstract
This study examines the code-switching of a
3.8-year-old boy (Daming) who is at the early stages of acquiring both his
first language - Mandarin Chinese - and his early second language - English. In
so doing we model a simple methodology for analysing the process of language
shift in a language contact situation from a microlinguistic rather than
macrolinguistic perspective. The child’s natural utterances in home settings
were tape recorded every other day over a four-week period. Qualitative and
quantitative analyses indicate that, within just 8 months of arrival in New Zealand, Daming exhibits certain mixing patterns
with different addressees. He tends to use more English than his parents do,
and he uses even more English with a playmate. Secondly, we have identified
some important markers of Daming’s language dominance in his code-switching
behaviour in the home setting suggesting that his dominant language in the home
setting is still Mandarin Chinese. However, the onset of a shift from Mandarin
towards English is evident in the higher percentage of English utterances in
his speech compared to that of his parents.