Examines the Chinese immigrant community in Auckland, New Zealand and how they address the question of first language maintenance in their largely new English-speaking environment. Shows that language maintenance, especially the written language is going to be an uphill struggle. (Author/VWL)

Focuses on the role of primary school teachers in Hong Kong, especially with respect to their treatment of individual learner differences among students. Looks specifically at how three teachers cope with the demands of attention to individual differences, an emphasis of the new target-oriented curriculum. (Author/VWL)

Examines the metacognitive knowledge of two groups of teachers from Mainland China. One group had 6 months of intensive English language teaching (ELT) instruction involving communicative methodology in Singapore; the other was subject to a more traditional approach to ELT methodology on the Mainland. Results show that while there are differences…

Examines language in the workplace, specifically the construction industry in Hong Kong. Provides detailed information on language use in a professional context at the time of Hong Kong's return to China and shows that written communication is mainly in English, while spoken language is predominately Cantonese. (Author/VWL)

Investigates the role of the three major languages in Hong Kong by looking in depth at one secondary school where Putonghua has official status rather than English or Cantonese. Motivation for code choice is investigated through interviews and questionnaires. While Putongua has a special role in the school, the use of Cantonese was found to…

Examines the English language standard of a group of Hong Kong science undergraduates using the ACER Word Knowledge Test Form F. Results show a significant difference in apparent English skill levels between Hong Kong, American, and Australian students.(Author/VWL)

Reports findings from two surveys into the experiences and attitudes of teachers in a university English teaching unit to the prospect of a curriculum increasingly mediated through information technology. Responses bear witness to problems teachers experienced attempting to computerize their pedagogical practices and show how issues of technology,…

Discusses schema theory in relation to the language classroom. Argues that as teachers themselves are former learners, the schemata they have developed both inside and outside the classroom will provide them assumptions about how people learn. (Author/VWL)

Discusses factors that influence learners' listening comprehension in relation to a group of Chinese English-as-Second-Language learners in Singapore. Reports on how one type of knowledge, within a broader framework of metacognitive knowledge, affects listening comprehension in learners of different ability levels. (Author/VWL)

Examines how the evolution of Cantonese dialect is continually influenced by contact with English and Putonghua, as well as by the internal dynamic of language change. Concludes that the wish to preserve a Hong Kong cultural identity distinct from that of mainland China, may be a factor in also retaining a unique linguistic identity. (Author/VWL)

Examines how secondary school students in Singapore construct knowledge through reading and understanding their science textbooks in an attempt to discover whether early or later pedagogic interventions in the learning process are more helpful. (Author/VWL)

Makes an appeal for corpus-based research with the objective of helping local English-as-a-Second-Language teachers deliver pedagogically sound error correction feedback to their students. Two examples are provided to illustrate how a teacher can use corrective feedback to help learners self-monitor their own written English output. (Author/VWL)

Investigates word frequency as an indicator of language proficiency in the written English of Grade 13 learners of English in Hong Kong. The study develops Laufer and Nation's (1995) work on Lexical Frequency Profile in which student writing was analyzed for the frequency of word families, with vocabulary profiles produced from the scripts on the…

Describes narrative activity in Spanish in a children's religious education class composed of Mexican immigrants at a Catholic parish in Los Angeles. Describes how students and their teacher collaborate in constructing a multiplicity of identities in an ongoing narrative within an oppressive colonial past in Mexico. (31 references) (Author/CK)

Examines methods by which an unaddressed participant of a story-in-progress displays her recipiency to a teller who addresses her talk to another participant, discussing how the unaddressed participant makes claims on the teller's attention through a series of upgraded responses to the story. The claims range from gaze direction to displays of…