We examined the impact of international service-learning (ISL) on students' development of intercultural sensitivity. Participants were undergraduate students of a Hong Kong university (N = 132) who enrolled in a credit-bearing ISL course with service projects in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Mainland China. The research is primarily qualitative but…

The present study investigated how Cantonese speakers learning English as a second language (L2) would comprehend English irony and whether their L2 proficiency and use would moderate their irony processing. Thirty Cantonese speakers with differing English proficiency (intermediate vs advanced) were asked to complete an irony comprehension task in…

In this study, the impacts of service learning (SL) on the spiritual well-being and psychological health of Chinese university students in Hong Kong are determined. The SL programme is a six-month, credit-bearing programme (not less than 80 working hours). The study adopted a pre-test-post-test quasi-experimental design, wherein students enrolled…

The adoption of online learning approach in education is becoming more popular around the world to overcome the time and spatial barriers of traditional face-to-face learning. The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected the normality of learning and avoiding face-to-face activities is one tactic to minimise the spread of…

Against the backdrop of internationalisation of education and the emergence of English as a global language, medium of instruction (MOI) has long been a controversial issue globally. The present study examined the relationships between secondary-level MOI (English, EMI; Chinese, CMI) and learners' tertiary-level academic achievement and…

Peer review is generally regarded as a useful learning tool for students, providing them with opportunities to interact with their peers when engaging in the process of critical reading and critical thinking, thus possibly raising students' motivation to learn. For peer review to be a manageable task for students, appropriate scaffolding is…

While most empirical studies have investigated the improvement of learners' L2 spoken proficiency via speaking-related interventions, the present study examined the same topic through a different modality: listening. Ninety-five first-year tertiary-level students of English as a second language (ESL) in Hong Kong participated in this three-month…

Student Response System (SRS) allows all students to have a chance to participate in the classroom with their own devices. While it is an effective tool for promoting active participation and classroom interaction, previous studies argue that overuse and over-dependence of the technology can pose a problem of student disengagement. This paper…

Instruction in second language (L2) English phoneme pronunciation almost invariably includes a focus on improving the learners' use of their articulatory organs to pronounce the relevant sounds. However, the pronunciation of many English sounds also relies on effort from the abdominal region, and under-utilization of this region can often…

Syntactic complexity is a crucial aspect of linguistic proficiency and thus understanding and supporting such development in learners is a keen concern for language teachers. Research conducted has shown growing sophistication of noun phrase structures by writers of different abilities in academic writing (Biber & Gray, 2010; Liu & Li,…

Interviews were conducted with 29 part-time taught postgraduate (TPg) students to determine forms of teaching and curriculum which motivated their learning. The study was conducted in an open exploratory manner to investigate the aspects of pedagogy or curriculum design which particularly motivated the TPg students which were in any way distinct…

This paper presents findings of a qualitative inquiry into international students' experiences and perceptions of their language use in an English-medium international university in multilingual Hong Kong, with particular attention to the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in relation to other languages. Based on data collected from in-depth…

Recent studies on active learning classrooms (ACLs) have demonstrated their positive influence on student learning. However, most of the research evidence is derived from a few subject-specific courses or limited student enrolment. Empirical studies on this topic involving large student populations are rare. The present work involved a large-scale…

From the perspective of Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory and Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), dynamic assessment (DA) highlights the role of mediation in the learning process by unveiling the distance between actual learning proficiency and potential learning development. DA is more helpful in fostering students' ability to solve problems…

This ethnographic case study explores intercultural and ethnographic engagement by undergraduate Hong Kong students enrolled in an Intercultural Communication course at a public research university. Ethnographic projects originated from virtual exchanges with undergraduates in a professional writing course at a private research institution on the…