This article reports on an empirical study of L3 Mandarin, aiming to shed light on transfer effects and their interaction with other factors throughout the L3 acquisition trajectory. A fill-in-the-blank task was employed to examine L2 and L3 acquisition of three types of Mandarin sentence-final particle clusters. Participants in the study were…

Against the backdrop of internationalisation and growing attention to intercultural experiences in tertiary education, this mixed-methods study examined, in part I, language learning benefits reaped by active participants in intercultural activities. As English is widely used for communication among multilinguals, part II of the study focused…

According to the speech learning model [Flege, J. E. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In W. Strange (Ed.), "Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research" (pp. 233-277). York Press], learners whose first language (L1) is a tonal language (e.g. Cantonese) can be…

Despite the widespread use of mobile digital devices such as iPads in teaching and learning, there is little research on the ways in which content teachers make use of the technological affordances of the iPad to achieve pedagogical goals in bilingual/multilingual classrooms. This article adopts translanguaging as an analytical perspective to…

This paper contributes to our conceptualization of linguistic identities in English as a lingua franca (ELF) communication by analyzing a group of multilingual international students' narrativized accounts of their ELF communication experiences in an international university in Hong Kong. The findings of the study indicate that despite their…

Hong Kong's 'trilingual and biliterate' language policy (TaB, [characters omitted]) is almost as old as the special administrative region (SAR) itself. Through free education and language support measures in school, students are expected to be conversant in English and Putonghua in addition to Cantonese, and be able to read and understand written…

Language learning has long been one of the most challenging issues facing non-Chinese speaking (NCS) students who are mainly ethnic minorities immersed in a multilingual environment in Hong Kong. Previous research on the education of NCS students suggested that early support from an immersion programme at a pre-school age may contribute to higher…

Post-colonial Hong Kong is an officially trilingual city with significant numbers of residents speaking English, Cantonese, Mandarin, or some combination of all three. Competency in these languages is promoted through educational policies and practices at all levels of schooling. Using concepts from the Deweyan framework of democracy and…

This paper probes alternative meanings and processes for decolonizing English that arise from the particular geopolitical histories and identities of Hong Kong and engagement with political and translingual activism. I illustrate the positioning and tension between English, 'Kongish' (a mix of English and localized linguistic resources in Hong…

With the rise of multilingualism and the use of a local variety of English in Hong Kong, the current article proposes a framework for EMI teacher training for university teachers ("WEMTT-Framework") to expose them not only to a theory of World Englishes but also a practicum of teaching in multilingual settings. Even though Hong Kong has…

Despite evidence of the acculturation benefits of social media engagement with mainstream culture, there is limited understanding of what motivates or demotivates ethnic minorities' social media engagement with mainstream culture. Adopting the theoretical construct of investment, this study interviewed 31 ethnic minority secondary school students…

In the context of the exponential growth of multicultural campuses worldwide and the consequent need for students to engage in intercultural interaction, this article reports on parts of the findings of a study examining the relationships between learners' backgrounds (language and intercultural experiences) and their intercultural views and…

Quantitative research on the linguistic acculturation of sojourners in non-Western and multilingual social contexts remains scarce. Revising the Framework of Acculturation Variables (FAV), we propose a parsimonious model exploring the effect of acculturation conditions (trilingual language usage and perceived discrimination), orientations (social…

While the importance of linguistically responsive teaching (LRT) in multilingual classrooms is well documented, preservice English teachers' conceptions of LRT and the pertinent sociocultural processes that shape their LRT conceptions and practices remain under-researched. Qualitatively examining the experiences and understandings of 15 preservice…

This study examines how immigrants' enculturation/acculturation, language use, and parenting were linked to their oral and written language proficiencies in multilingual Hong Kong (speak English, speak Cantonese, read and write Chinese). Participants in this study included 655 immigrant parents (from Pakistan, Nepal, India, Philippines, Indonesia,…