While language is clearly an important aspect of (labor) migration, there have not been many contemplations and interrogations, although truly compelling and necessary, on language varieties and their place and position in labor migration and transnational work in the contemporary world, and hence why we intend to do so in this article. In our…

Since the sovereignty of Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, English has remained an official language and been formally referred to as a second language, though in reality it has, arguably, the status of a foreign language. This is especially true for writing because students do not have to write in English outside the classroom.…

Perusall, a collaborative reading tool, was introduced in an advanced reading and writing skills course in Hong Kong to increase engagement with texts and encourage critical discussion during the COVID-19 face-to-face class suspension. Students were asked to use the Perusall platform to complete pre-class readings, highlight and annotate text and…

Peer review has been promoted for decades in order to engage students in the assessment process which then leads to better learning outcomes. This teaching pedagogy is relatively innovative in the Hong Kong language classroom because English as a Second Language (ESL) students are not aware of their responsibility in the language learning process…

With the expanding role of English medium instruction (EMI) worldwide there has been an increasing use of English to teach content subjects at tertiary level. In implementing EMI a common assumption has been that the primary issue affecting successful EMI is the English proficiency level of the EMI instructor. This paper reviews this assumption by…

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…

Although translation may be considered the "sine qua non" of bilingual legislation, the perceived authenticity and equivalence of different language versions of the same law are contingent on the disavowal of translation. Yet precisely because of such disavowal, translated versions of law are paradoxically valorized as equal in meaning…

Many scholars and teachers in EFL education should agree that compared with reading and writing, listening has received much less attention. This brief article discusses important gaps existing in EFL listening and overall proficiency development. It presents the case for a greater focus on sounds and actual listening in the classroom and spoken…

This paper covers the work in progress of an e-platform being developed for language enhancement at a tertiary institution in Hong Kong. There is an actual or perceived concern about the English and Chinese language ability of undergraduate students at certain universities in Hong Kong. One reason for this is that a significant proportion of…

Perusall, a web-based collaborative reading platform characterised by its social annotation functionalities, was introduced in a postgraduate teacher-training language-awareness course in Hong Kong during the shift to online teaching and learning brought about by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Tasks were designed on Perusall to engage the…

Twenty-six learners of English enrolled in an MA course were asked to give the metaphors which they think best capture the essence of their learning experience so far. Their metaphors tell how English learning had introduced them to a brand new world and, once they were inside it, led them to a seemingly endless series of new discoveries. The…

The vocabulary research of the 1980s and 1990s brought a breath of fresh air into the language classroom. Teachers in many remote EFL locations had long suspected that vocabulary was their learners' main challenge, but there was little research evidence to confirm this or say what to do about it. Then, suddenly, work by Nation, Laufer, Meara,…

In Hong Kong, Chinese and English are considered separate mediums of instruction. English immersion is expected for schools that teach with English as the medium of instruction, and direct instruction in Chinese is often used to teach English in Chinese medium schools. Evidently, a great divide persists in the Hong Kong government curriculum. In…

Digital media play an undeniably influential role in contemporary communication, facilitating new kinds of multimodal forms of representation. However, ELT pedagogy does not always take these multimodal aspects of communication into account in a systematic way. One pedagogical approach that has been developed for this purpose is 'multimodal…

This article introduces the use of public exam questions in fishbowl debate to engage highly exam-oriented secondary students with communicative language teaching (CLT). The practice aims to address the issue that many teachers of English as a second language (ESL)/English as a foreign language (EFL) in Asian contexts either teach to the test or…