Prof Melinda Whong Director, Center for Language Education It is my pleasure to share the excellent work of the Center for Language Education in this inaugural Newsletter. After the prolonged period of teaching online, it has been a pleasure to be back on campus this past year. We have discovered that our experiences have given us a new lease on life, resulting in a wide range of activity and initiatives. Language Centers have a habit of downplaying their work because of their inherently supportive nature. But the strength of the center here at HKUST means that a great amount of excellent work is taking place. Of course, our main work is to teach language classes, as all HKUST students must fulfill language course requirements in their programs of study. But as is appropriate for a university of the rank and standing of HKUST, the CLE does far more than that. In these pages we are pleased to share with you some of the exciting events and activities that have taken place this past year. We have also included developments in our programming, as well as featured some of our successes. I would like to thank our students, instructors and staff for their ongoing commitment and dedication to the CLE. Without your hard work and commitment, we would not be able to provide the high-quality language education that we are known for. Please read on to see how we in the CLE are contributing both on campus and in the community. We hope you enjoy our first CLE Newsletter, and we look forward to hearing your feedback and suggestions for future editions. With all best wishes, Prof Melinda Whong Director, Center for Language Education 1 CLE Annual Newsletter 2022-23
Foreword (by D/CLE) 1 Content Page 2 Who We Are & Mission Statement (what we do, what kinds of courses & activities we offer) 3 Achievement (Awards and Honors) 3-5 Grants and Projects 6 Highlights of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 7 Event and Programs Highlights 8-9 New Courses / Activities 10 2
Who We Are & Mission Statement Achievement (Awards and Honors) The Center of Language Education (CLE) at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) is dedicated to providing our students with the best language education to help them achieve their professional and academic goals. Here at the CLE, we believe that language is a crucial tool for communication, personal growth and academic success. Our mission is to help students develop their language skills through engaging and interactive learning experiences. We offer a wide range of language courses including English, Chinese and other foreign languages to students from diverse backgrounds and academic disciplines. Our team of 80 highly professional and experienced language professionals is committed to providing high quality instruction and support to help students achieve their language goals. We teach language to all HKUST Undergraduate and Postgraduates, with over 7,000 students on our courses every semester. We also contribute to our School’s MA in International Language Education providing input on both the specialized concentrations: Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) and Teaching Chinese as a Second Language (TCSL). We strive to create a welcoming and inclusive learning environment that fosters cultural awareness and appreciation. • Yılmaz Köylü and Nick Wong received CLE Teaching Award in Sept 2022 • Elza Tsang received prestigious UGC Teaching Award with colleagues from PolyU, HKBU and CityU for the English Across the Curriculum (EAC) project in Sept 2022 • Nick Wong received Honourable Mention in SHSS Best Teaching Award Scheme in 2022 • Sandy Chan, May Liao and Melissa Megan received first SENtastic Award Scheme in HKUST in Apr 2023 • Angela Cheng and Amy Chi were awarded the Long Service Award in May 2023 for their 30 years contributions to CLE and HKUST Awards & Honors 3 CLE Annual Newsletter 2022-23 Left: Mr Edward Li (Associate Director) Middle: Prof Melinda Whong (Director) Right: Dr Nora Hussin (Associate Director)
Ahrens, K., Burgers, C., & Zhong, Y. (2022). Evaluating the influence of metaphor in news on foreign-policy support. International Journal of Communication, 16, 4140-4163. https://ijoc.org/ index.php/ijoc/article/view/18201 Carmichael, S., Wu, K. Y., & Anita, C. H. A. (2023). Cross-faculty cooperation in an ESP course: Issues arising in the COVID pandemic. STiLE – Scholarship of Teaching in Language Education. Chan, K. L. R. (2022). Code-switching in Hong Kong: Key to implementing a Hong Kong English curriculum?. In C. Palmar & M. Devereaux (Eds.), Teaching English Language Variation in the Global Classroom: Ideas and Activities from Teachers and Linguists (pp. 132-141). Routledge. http://doi. org/10.4324/9781003124665-17 Chan, K. L. R. (2022). Hong Kong English: The situation and its future. In C. Smaoui & A. Rahal (Eds.), World Englishes and Language Assessment (pp. 125-143). Cambridge Scholars. Chan, K. L. R. (2022). A review of Hong Kong English in the World Englishes paradigm. In I. Papadopoulos & S. Karpava (Eds.), Current Trends in Applied Linguistics Research and Implementation (pp. 53-69). Disigma. Chan, K. L. R. (2023). Trilingualism in Hong Kong: A World Englishes framework for EMI English teachers in university. LEARN Journal: Language Education and Acquisition Research Network, 16(1), 1-17. Chan, K. L. R., & Chan, N. C. L. (2023). Preliminary study on conflations in Hong Kong English. In U. Widiati et al. (Comps.), Hindsight, Insight, and Foresight in ELT in Multilingual Asia, the 20th AsiaTEFL – 68th TEFLIN – 5th iNELTAL Conference Proceedings (pp. 280-285). Universitas Negeri Malang. Chan, T. A. C. H., Ho, J. M.-B., & Tom, M. (2023). Miro: Promoting collaboration through online whiteboard interaction. RELC Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi. org/10.1177/00336882231165061 Chi, A. (2022). Researching pedagogical lexicography. In H. Jackson (Ed), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Lexicography (pp.145-164). Bloomsbury Publishing. Du, Y. Z. (2023). The application of contextualized task-based exercises in polysemy teaching based on a "Pragmatic Language Usage" approach. Journal of Chinese Teaching and Research in the U.S., 2023, 63-69. Köylü, Y. (2023). A feature-based account of genericity and kind reference. Studia Linguist. Advance online publication. https://doi. org/10.1111/stul.12212 Ladegaard, H. J., & Chan, K. L. R. (2022). Teachers’ attitudes towards varieties of Hong Kong English: Implications for English language teaching. English World-Wide, 44(2), 251-275. https://doi. org/10.1075/eww.21060.lad Publications 4
Wan, M. Y., Zhong, Y., Gao, X, F., Lee, S. Y. M., & Huang, C. R. (2023). Fake news, real emotions: Emotion analysis of COVID-19 infodemic in Weibo. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, 1-13. http://doi.org/10.1109/taffc.2023.3295806 Whong, M. (2022). A blind spot in applied linguistics. Pedagogical Linguistics, 3(2), 181-186. https://doi.org/10.1075/pl.22011.who Wu, K.Y. (2022). [Review of the book Grammar: A linguist’s guide for language teachers, by T. Rankin & M. Whong]. JALT Journal, 44(1), 198-201. https:// jalt-publications.org/sites/default/files/pdf-article/ jj44.1-reviews.pdf Zhong, Y., Ahrens, K., & Huang, C. R. (2023). Entity, event, and sensory modalities: An onto-cognitive account of sensory nouns. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 10(1), 1-12. https://doi. org/10.1057/s41599-023-01677-z Zhong, Y., Ahrens, K., & Huang, C. R. (2023). Novel metaphor and embodiment: Comprehending novel synesthetic metaphors. Linguistics Vanguard: A Multimodal Journal for the Language Sciences. Advance online publication. https://doi. org/10.1515/lingvan-2022-0020 Zhong, Y., & Dong, S. (2023). From genitive to conjunctive: Coordinator li55 in Chongqing Mandarin. In: Su, Q., Xu, G., Yang, X. (Eds.), Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (pp.193-205), vol 13496. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3031-28956-9_16 Zhong, Y., & Ahrens, K. (2023). The emotion code in sensory modalities. In: Su, Q., Xu, G., Yang, X. (Eds.), Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (pp.183192), vol 13496. Springer, Cham. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-3-031-28956-9_15 Zhou, S., & Briggs, B.-D. J., (2023). "You just picked it up" The relationship between informal language contact and phrasal verb knowledge among international students in the UK. Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education. 8(1), 142-176. https://doi. org/10.1075/sar.21040.zho Publications 5 CLE Annual Newsletter 2022-23
6 Grants and Projects Fundings & Grants In academic year 2022–23, the CLE received funding grants for four projects: Staff Name of fundings and grants Brief introduction Project leaders: Kasina Wong, Nick Wong and Prof. Huamin Qu (CSE) AI-assisted Virtual Reality English Speaking Program for Secondary Students (Quality Education Fund, May 2023) The project received a funding of 30.4 million dollars from the Quality Education Fund (QEF) with the aim of developing an AI assisted VR English speaking program for secondary and tertiary education institutions that can help enhance and enrich the English-speaking learning experience for students. Currently, there 11 local schools participating in this project and will launch this coming September. Project leader: KasinaWong Project members: Nick Wong and Delian Gaskell Enhancing Students’ VR Job Interview Practice Experience through Oculus Software for Business Students and Beyond (Teaching and Learning Innovation Projects, HKUST, December 2022) The project builds upon the success of the I'm IN - HKUST VR job interview practice application, which was funded by CEI in 2021 and is led by the same team. By incorporating Oculus software, the project aims to provide a more realistic and immersive VR job interview practice for students, ultimately enhancing their communication skills. This project targets not only students in a Business Communication Course but also students from other disciplines. Project leaders: Levi Lam and Mark Melican Extended Curriculum: Digital Literacy (Podcasting) (Teaching and Learning Innovation Projects, HKUST, December 2022) Funded by the CEI. It aims at providing students with an opportunity to learn about podcasting by guiding them through the development, recording, and postproduction of their own podcast episodes. Project leader: Fiona Ho Project members: Angie Li and Nick Wong Learning League: A Collaborative Students Leading Students Programme Enhancing Secondary School Students’ English Proficiency (Quality Education Fund, December 2022) The Learning League is a collaborative students leading students (SLS) programme received funded by the QEF. This project is a service-learning programme that promotes education equity by offering free education support to underprivileged secondary school students with the hope of enhancing their English proficiency. The Learning League adopts a flipped classroom approach, providing English language teaching training and online self-directed learning materials for higher proficiency students. In addition, the project utilizes the learningby-teaching pedagogy, allowing higher proficiency students to work on weekly challenges by teaching lower proficiency students to consolidate their knowledge acquisition under the supervision of our HKUST English lecturers.
Highlights of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Projects Task and Finish Group for Pronunciation Formed in 2022, the T&F group is a scholarship project led by Melinda Whong and John Fung with the aim of exploring the latest developments of teaching English and Mandarin Pronunciation in order to make recommendations to help the teaching of pronunciation in CLE language courses. Blended Learning Proposal for LANG3027: Teaching Advanced Research Writing Skills to Multidisciplinary Science Students Headed by Elza Tsang and Eunice Tang, it aims at offering a course that teaches multidisciplinary science students the skills needed to write up their research reports professionally. Other than teaching through traditional classroom teaching, the project has been investigating the feasibility of incorporating blended learning into the course structure. New Advanced Academic Writing Course for Undergraduate Business Students Headed by Jessie Lam, the writing course aims at teaching students advanced writing skills that can be transferable across business courses and expose them to more discipline specific genres and rhetorical conventions so that they can be adapted to help them write more effectively in their discipline. LANG1404: Advanced Academic English for University Studies Presented by Susan Stamper, Gary Muddeman, May Liao and Yilmaz Koylu during the Summer EYE for introducing the new LANG1404 course, which focuses on developing university level academic skills in both writing, speaking and multimodal contexts. Pilot for the course had already started back in the fall semester of 2022 with four sections and 31 sections in the previous spring semester. There will be 35 sections this coming fall semester and one of the major changes made over the summer was to incorporate the use of Gen AI in class activities such as using ChatGPT for topic selection for assessments. Exploring how to teach and assess multimodality: Findings from the literature review of the T&F group Multimodality has become increasingly important in the world of academia and with current courses like LANG1403 and 1404 already incorporating multimodal assessments, it is important to address the challenges educators may encounter. The T&F group presented their findings during the summer EYE and findings from the literature review suggest that a new evaluative framework needs to be developed specifically for multimodal assessments. However, this itself has raised new challenges for teachers such as the lack of expertise in this area. The Rising Challenge of Gen AI: Redesigning English and Chinese undergraduate writing assignments by embracing Gen AI A team consisting of Delian Gaskell, Bernadette Wo, Kasina Wong, Krista Du, Mansurbek Kushnazarov, Nick Wong and Yin Zhou examined ways of incorporating Gen AI in writing assessments for both English and Chinese courses in the CLE. The group suggested changes that include adding new competencies that can adapt to the evolving nature of Gen AI, new assessment types for the Gen AI era and the possibility of co-creating assessments with students. Embracing learning in the age of generative AI This year has undoubtedly been a challenge for many tertiary educational institutions all over the world with the challenges brought by generative AI technology. Despite this, the CLE strives to be at the forefront of pedagogical innovation and is working to integrate generative AI to enhance student learning with ongoing projects such as the EDGE-AI funded project that was presented in the Summer EYE event. As a means of addressing the impact of GenAI on current courses offered by the CLE, a mandatory selfdirected module was also introduced this semester. The module was designed to educate students to use these tools effectively and ethically in their assessments. 7 CLE Annual Newsletter 2022-23
Event and Programs Highlights 8 Held twice a year to celebrate and share staff work at this event and be part of CLE’s growing community of scholarly educators. All the teaching staff can showcase their ideas, practices and resources for evidencebased teaching and learning and in other related areas, whether they are at the initial stages or near completion of a scholarship project. The event, held on 29 May at CLE workplace, gathered teaching staff of CLE to explore the opportunities and challenges of Gen AI in language teaching and learning. After the opening speeches by Prof Whong, the Director of CLE and Edward Li and Nora Hussin, the Associate Directors, four invited students participated and shared their experiences and attitudes over the Gen AI in their studies with the participants. After that, the LANG teachers explored the use of Gen AI and its impacts over language teaching in a dynamic and engaging ‘show & tell’ sessions, of which covered the areas such as materials development, assessments, scholarship, etc. Hosted by CLE, the first annual symposium by the Association of Hong Kong Language Centres (AHKLC) was held at HKUST on 31 May. Kicked started with the opening talk The Long and Winding Road – Teaching and Scholarship by Prof Bee Bond, the Deputy Director of the Language Centre at Leeds University and an introduction to Scholarship of Teaching in Language Education (STiLE) by Prof Melinda Whong, the Director of the Center for Language Education at HKUST, 33 speakers from different universities and tertiary institutions in Hong Kong delivered 19 presentations which covered various themes and topics relevant to the field of languages teaching and learning. End of Year Events (EYE) AHKLC Symposium - The Launch of STiLE GenAI: Show & Tell
The program was hosted by Dalian University of Foreign Languages (DUFL)and supported by China’s Ministry of Education, took place in Dalian from 5 to 15 June 2023. The event has been running since 2013. This year, 133 students applied, with 38 selected for in-person participation in Dalian and the rest taking part online. This was the first offline exchange since the pandemic, and students showed great enthusiasm. In addition to student exchanges, this year’s program included academic lectures by Benjamin Leung and Krista Du for DUFL’s English and Chinese schools and a forum on extended curriculum by Ada Luo and Vicky Yu, the IAs from iLANG to facilitate experience sharing. Closer cooperation and collaboration is also being explored by both sides. The iLANG short courses, activities and workshops aim to supplement and complement the current 3rd languages programs, promote to the learning of the 3rd languages and the corresponding cultures, and pilot new initiatives which will be incorporated into the current curricular. Programs offered this semester include Spanish Conversation Group, Japanese Chat Chat “Mori Mori basic” and the French Conversation Group. iLANG also introduced the Chinese Buddy Language Program to students to help them with their Putonghua speaking skills. Student leaders or ‘buddies’ will lead a group of students and engage in number of fun activities organised throughout the semester to allow students to practice speaking Putonghua in relaxing environments to help build up their confidence. iLANG Short Courses and Activities of Third Languages: Spanish, Japanese, Putonghua, Cantonese and French Dalian Exchange Program 2023 Sharing Our Expertise Kasina Wong: “I'm IN - A VR Job Interview Practice Application for Business Students and Beyond” at “Beyond-the-Classroom Strategy: Integrating Technology into Virtual Teaching and Learning” by CEI, HKUST on 18 October 2022 https://cei.hkust.edu.hk/en-hk/event/beyond-classroom-strategy-integrating-technology-virtualteaching-and-learning Yılmaz Köylü: “Future of Education” at TEDxEdUHK on 27 May 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuVuoJDK_E8 Mark Hopkins: “Cultural Differences between France and Hong Kong” for Global Immersion Programme, HKMU on 2 January 2023 Roy Chan: “The Pronunciation Teaching in Hong Kong and an Intelligibility-based Pronunciation Teaching Approach (Invited Keynote Speech)” at The International Conference on Bilingual Education 2023 by The Asia University (Taiwan) on 9 June 2023 9 CLE Annual Newsletter 2022-23
10 New Courses / Activities From this Fall term (September 2023), CLE offers the following new credit-bearing and enrichment courses: LANG1422 Chinese for Workplace Application This course is for students who have a background in Chinese. It aims to enhance their Chinese communication skills and understanding of how language plays a crucial role in various workplace contexts including meetings, branding, customer interactions, change and crisis management, and intercultural contexts. LANG1424 Chinese Writing in Cultural Contexts This course targets all students who have a background in Chinese, and with a strong interest in the study of Chinese writing and cultural issues. It aims to cultivate students’ logical expression skills in Chinese in the context of investigative study of culture. LANG5005 Communicating Research in English This course aims to help research postgraduate students to develop skills they need to understand how to successfully communicate research in English to academic, cross-disciplinary and nonspecialist audiences. The course is offered for research postgraduate students. LANG2061 Professional Writing for the Workplace This course offers students the language and communication skills and strategies to adapt their writing to any professional contexts. It increases student awareness of how writing creates change and convinces one to take action, and how audiences, contexts and genre call for different choices in language, organization, format and style. LANG2062 Professional Speaking for the Workplace This course equips students with the language and communication skills and strategies to speak and present professionally in internal and external business settings. It increases student awareness of how speaking and presenting creates change and convinces one to take action. Students will also develop ways to express themselves in multimodal settings. LANG3060 Advanced Academic Writing This course offers students advanced strategies and practice in writing texts in their academic disciplines. It increases student awareness of how disciplinary conventions, genre and rhetorical situations call for different choices in language, organization, format, citation and style. The course also develops in students the view of writing as a social process as they work with a community of writers who share ideas, give feedback and support. MILE5005 Descriptions of Language for English Teachers (in collaboration with SHSS) The foundation course provides MAILE students with a broad grounding on the nature and structure of language by introducing them to English linguistic analysis. Topics to be discussed include key subfields of linguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Highlights on the Event Spanish Food Culture, discover a Spanish City, Social Rules of Japanese Society, French and English: What They Owe Each Other, Making Friends (Cantonese), etc.
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