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The map of Hong Kong. Source: Retrieved June 24, 2009, from http://www.wordtravels.com/Travelguide/Countries/ China/Map
Source publication
This monograph provides an overview of the language situation in Hong Kong from a historical perspective. Hong Kong has evolved in the past 167 years from a small fishing port to an international financial centre which forms part of a financial network hailed by Time Magazine as Ny.Lon.Kong (i.e. New York-London-Hong Kong). Hong Kong has gone throu...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... generally quite positive about studying in CMI [Chinese-medium] schools in the sense that learning is faster, better and more interactive through the Chinese medium (Findings 6, 8). However, surprisingly, though, quite a large number of students chose to study in English- medium schools if they were given an offer irrespective of their bandings (Findings 9, 10). (Poon, 2009, p. 219) ...
Context 2
... apparent discrepancy in the findings reveals that the schools and students' choices of medium of instruction 'are to quite a large extent determined by the dominant social values, which are framed by various forces in their social milieu' (Poon, 2009, p. 219). The high value traditionally accorded to English in Hong Kong society has thus been intensified by the compulsory Chinese-medium instruction policy as the number of English-medium schools has been dramatically reduced, thus creating keen competition among students and between schools. ...
Citations
... There is a relatively substantial literature on language policy in Hong Kong (Poon, 2010) and Macao (Yan, 2017). Both cities were under colonial ruledBritish Hong Kong (1842Kong ( -1997 and Portuguese Macao (1849-1999)before their re-integration into China in the late 1990s. ...
... National laws are not applicable to the two SARs except for those listed in Annex III of the Basic Law, which excludes the National Language Law and most national language-related regulations (Basic Law Article 18). Yet, arguably, these institutional formulations are reflexive of the cultural practices already developed in the region's social, cultural, political and economic transformations (Poon, 2010;Yan, 2017;Zhu, 2022 character forms of the two Chinese scripts have been iconized, especially in Hong Kong and Macao, as a marked distinction between the two SARs from mainland China (Guo et al., 2020;Wong, 2016;Yan, 2016). Territorial boundaries were formed in these histories of colonial and postcolonial development in the SARs, and the post-1945 national reforms in mainland China. ...
... What is the intended content of this category as a legal term has been an on-going topic discussed in research (Qu, 2020a). In practice, the traditional characters have retained their de facto status as the dominant written variety used by both the governments and the public in the SARs (Poon, 2010;Yan, 2017). At the same time, simplified characters have gained more prominence in the past two decades with the intensifying ties between the two cities and mainland China-in population flow (e.g., tourism and immigration) and in governmental collaborations. ...
This article investigates the relationship between language policy and spatial production. The regulation of language is inextricably tied to extra-linguistic - social, cultural, political and economic - processes permeating the broader sociolinguistic ecology. The article argues that language policy creates territorial space in this otherwise open ecology. Territories emerge from the tension between two dimensions of language policy: the free-flowing language activities in circulation and the coordinated regulation of boundaries in space. The article examines the relation between these two dimensions through the concepts of 'languaging' and 'assemblage'. This theoretical argument is illustrated with the developing Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in southern China as an example. The example suggests two theoretical implications. First, language policy regulates not only linguistic features or varieties but the coordination between linguistic and extra-linguistic practices of languaging. Second, territorial spaces are created not by externally imposed orders but by assemblages formed within the processes of languaging.
... This context is distinct from other EMI classrooms in Hong Kong, where the teacher and students usually share the same first language (L1), which is Cantonese (e.g. Poon, 2010;Tai & Li, 2020). The head of the school strongly supported the implementation of iPads as a tool to enhance high-quality education and learning experiences. ...
Background
Second language classroom research has explored how teachers demonstrate their classroom interactional competence (CIC). CIC focuses on teachers' ability to use appropriate language to mediate students’ learning and promote learning opportunities. Research on translanguaging has highlighted how teachers and students mobilise diverse multilingual, multimodal and spatial repertoires to collectively construct meaning in classroom interactions.
Aims and samples
Based on a larger linguistic ethnographic project in a Hong Kong English-Medium-Instruction secondary mathematics classroom, this paper adopts a case study approach in order to examine how the teacher's use of iPad expands his choice for using different multimodal repertoire to mediate and assist students' learning of academic language and mathematical knowledge.
Methods
Multimodal Conversation Analysis is deployed to analyse the classroom interaction data and it is triangulated with the video-stimulated-recall-interviews that are analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.
Results
It is evident in the findings that the construction of a technology-mediated space displays the English-Medium-Instruction teacher's CIC, harnessing the available semiotic repertoires afforded by the iPad in order to achieve his pedagogical goals.
Conclusions
I argue that the notion of CIC can be conceptualised through adopting translanguaging as an analytical perspective, which highlights the teacher's ability in orchestrating technological affordances for creating an interactional space for student learning. Such a conceptualisation reinforces the need for teachers to draw on a wide range of available multilingual, multimodal, and technological repertoire to create a learning environment conductive to interaction and academic and language learning in English-Medium-Instruction classroom.
... Acknowledging both English and Chinese as official languages, the medium of instruction (MOI) policy in primary and secondary schools have undergone several changes from Chinese-medium instruction (CMI) to English-medium instruction (EMI) and mixed-medium instruction (see, e.g., Poon, 2013;Tai & Li, 2021a;Tollefson & Tsui, 2014). These policy changes have reflected different ideological positionings of the government and different stake holders (such as parents and teachers) in relation to the social, economic, and political values they ascribed to the different languages (Poon, 2010(Poon, , 2013. In classrooms, the CMI or EMI policy has been expected to carry out a monolingual rule of either Chinese or English for teaching and learning. ...
... Mandarin and English, with 42% and 40% of the population respectively being able to speak each (Poon 2010). Despite HK no longer being a British colony after 1997 and less than 5% of the population above the age of five using English as their usual spoken language, English continues to enjoy a very high level of prestige in post-colonial HK, and it remains one of the major languages of instruction (Li 1999;Hansen-Edwards 2018;Wakefield 2021). ...
This study investigates the impact of Filipina domestic workers (FilDWs), a marginalised group in Hong Kong (HK), on HK children’s language development. It focuses on FilDWs’ influence on the second language (L2) English of bilingual HK primary school children attending an English Medium of Instruction school. The elements investigated are: L2 English spoken complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF), and reading accuracy and fluency. Participants comprise thirty-four children (17 boys and 17 girls, mean age 8;11) from homes with FilDWs and 30 (15 boys and 15 girls, mean age 8;11) from homes with no FilDW. Participants completed an English reading and speaking task, and an English working memory capacity (WMC) test. Participants from households with FilDWs scored significantly higher on all aspects of both English language measures, while no significant differences for WMC was observed. These suggest that FilDWs exert a positive impact on children’s L2 English proficiency, placing them in a different position to the low status they are usually ascribed. These findings have implications for decolonising and decentring language learning and teaching.
Keywords: L2 English acquisition, language proficiency, CAF, Filipina domestic workers, home language environment, working memory capacity
... Over 90% of the population in HK is ethnic Chinese, with Cantonese as their language for everyday communication and standard written Chinese as their written language. Most of the primary schools in HK adopt Chinese-Medium-Instruction (CMI) for most content subjects and English is taught as a separate core subject (Poon 2010). There are various reasons for universities in HK to use EMI, including the need to align with international tertiary education, attract more international students and strengthen their competitive edge (e.g. ...
... Evans 2002). Whilst the medium-of-instruction policies are broadly set for primary and university education, medium-of-instruction policy at the secondary level has gone through immense changes (Poon 2010). HK's secondary schools have witnessed three key stages in the development with regard to medium-of-instruction policies, including (1) the laissez-faire policy prior to 1994; (2) the compulsory CMI policy during 1998-2010 which allowed 114 secondary schools to use EMI to teach content subjects while the remaining 307 schools were mandated to use CMI; and (3) the fine-tuning medium-of-instruction policy since 2010. ...
A key pedagogical goal in any classroom is to engage students in learning. This study examines how an English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) teacher employs available resources to engage his students in the classroom for promoting participation, keeping the lesson moving forward and meeting the pedagogical goals. The data for this study is based on a intensive fieldwork in an EMI secondary history classroom in Hong Kong. Multimodal Conversation Analysis is deployed to analyse the classroom interactional data. The classroom analysis is triangulated with the video-stimulated-recall-interviews that are analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The study's crucial theoretical contribution is that it broadens our comprehension of an EMI classroom as an integrated translanguaging space, which may involve various fluid and mobile translanguaging sub-spaces. This paper aims to illustrate the process of engaging students affords the teacher to create different translanguaging sub-spaces at a whole-class level and at an individual level. It is argued that creating these translanguaging sub-spaces requires the teacher to mobilise available resources for catering for the different needs of all students, which promotes interaction and inclusion in the classrooms.
... Some of them 'feel lonely and stressed', 'encounter language barriers', 'feel discrimination', 'experience cultural differences' and 'feel difficult to integrate into local life' [38][39][40]. Specifically, mainland students meet language barriers when adapting themselves to a bi-lingual environment (English for academic purposes and Cantonese for social interaction [41]) when studying in Hong Kong [38]. Cultural differences refer to the subtle difference between a subculture (Hong Kong) and its mother culture (Mainland China), such as the social norm, living style [40], as well as differences in the academic cultural environments [42]. ...
PhD students’ poor mental health has been increasingly concerning. However, challenges among PhD students studying aboard are understudied. The Educational and Life Transitions (ELT) model postulates that international PhD students are subject to both academic and acculturative stressors; however, relevant research is limited in the Chinese context. We examined mainland Chinese PhD students’ study and living experiences in Hong Kong using a qualitative approach. Through purposive sampling, 37 mainland Chinese PhD students in different disciplines from public-funded universities in Hong Kong were recruited to participate in online focus group interviews (December 2020–February 2021). The interviews were analyzed using the framework analysis method. Ten themes of academic/acculturative stressors were identified. The academic stressors included: (1) high expectations from the supervisors; (2) emphasis on self-discipline as PhD students; (3) peer comparison in academia; (4) difficulties shifting research directions/academic disciplines; (5) uncertainties about future career. The acculturative stressors included: (1) differences in the political environment; (2) language barriers; (3) difficulties living in Hong Kong; (4) limited social interaction with others; (5) local people’s discriminatory behaviors. This study sheds light on the stressors experienced by mainland Chinese PhD students in Hong Kong. To better address those students’ academic and acculturative stressors, cross-cultural training and additional support from supervisors/the university could be provided.
... Whilst medium-of-instruction policies in HK are broadly set for primary and university education, the medium-of-instruction policy at the secondary level has gone through immense changes (Poon 2010). HK's secondary schools have witnessed three key stages in development with regard to medium-of-instruction policies. ...
Prior research in Applied Linguistics has explored how teachers mobilise diverse resources in order to make connections between the students’ out-of-school knowledge and experiences and the abstract content knowledge. Nevertheless, how teachers can transcend the boundaries of disciplinary knowledge by incorporating relevant content knowledge from other academic subjects to facilitate students’ learning of new content knowledge is a topic that is under-researched in the field. Adopting translanguaging as an analytical perspective, this study examines how the creation of a translanguaging space can afford opportunities for an English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) teacher to connect content-related knowledge for supporting students’ learning of new historical knowledge in EMI Western History classrooms. The data is based on a larger linguistic ethnographic project in a Hong Kong EMI secondary Western History classroom. Multimodal Conversation Analysis is used to analyse the classroom interaction data. The classroom interaction data is triangulated with the video-stimulated-recall-interviews that are analysed with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. This paper argues that a translanguaging classroom space can be created for activating students’ prior learnt subject knowledge for supporting students’ learning of new academic knowledge. Such a translanguaging space provides opportunities for classroom participants to not only engage in fluid language practices, but also encourages the teacher and students to bring in multiple epistemologies that help students understand new academic knowledge in a new classroom interactional context.
... Therefore, Hong Kong has also been described as an East and West meeting point, a place where Chinese culture coexists with Western culture. [1]. Language education policy has a long history in a typical cross-cultural, cross-contextual Hong Kong society. ...
... In fact, most teachers resort to the use of mixed codes, where they mix English and Chinese in their speech. The range of usage varies from most of the time using English and some Chinese explanations to most of the time using Chinese and some English terms [1]. They also assume that in Hong Kong schools, the use of mixed languages was, and still is, not just unavoidable, but also preferable. ...
For historical and practical reasons, the language education policy in Hong Kong and Macau is characterised by "multilingualism". At present, bilingual education is spreading across universities and primary and secondary schools in many provinces and cities in mainland China, but faces a number of bottlenecks that need to be addressed, one of which is the policy on bilingual education. This paper examines the role of English in language education policies in Hong Kong, reviewing past and future language education policies in Hong Kong, the historical context of language education policies, the debates over language education policies, and the assessment of the successes or challenges of these policies.
... The selection of medium-of-instruction in the educational system has been a highly controversial issue in HK, where the majority of the citizens speak Cantonese as their L1. Although the medium-of-instruction policies are broadly set for primary and university education, medium-of-instruction policy at the secondary level has gone through immense changes (Poon 2010). HK's secondary schools have witnessed three key stages in the development with regard to medium-of-instruction policies, including (i) the laissez-faire policy prior to 1994; (ii) the compulsory Chinese Medium Instruction (CMI) policy during 1998-2010 which allowed 114 secondary schools to use EMI to teach content subjects while the remaining 307 schools were mandated to use CMI; and (iii) the fine-tuning medium-of-instruction policy since 2010. ...
A growing number of studies have explored the ways how teachers contingently respond to students’ unexpected responses or a lack of student responses in second language classrooms. From a sociocultural perspective, teacher contingency involves a departure from the lesson plan in local response to the unexpected or unforeseeable actions in the classroom interactions (van Lier, 2001). This study adopts translanguaging as an analytical perspective in order to examine how a teacher employs various resources to contingently respond to students’ initiatives and reformulate his utterances in order to prompt student participation. The data are based on a larger linguistic ethnographic project in a Hong Kong English-Medium-Instruction secondary history classroom. This paper reconceptualizes the notion of teacher contingency and argues that the process of how the teacher contingently responds to the unexpected outcomes that arise in real-time interactions is a process of translanguaging. Such a process requires the teacher in orchestrating the available linguistic and multimodal resources to construct pedagogical actions on the spot, instead of being planned in advance.
... Despite this, the status of English remains high in Hong Kong and continues to rise. English remains one of the most important subject in Hong Kong's K-12 education system and the medium of instruction in all universities (Poon, 2010). As shown in Table 1.2, although native English speakers amount to only a small part of the Hong Kong population, people who use English as an additional language increased from 41.9% to 48.9% from 2006 to 2016. ...
... Modern Standard Chinese and English) and three spoken languages (i.e. Cantonese, English, and Putonghua) in the education sector and the wider community throughout Hong Kong (Poon, 2010). However, research has shown that many Hong Kong people are still unprepared for the policy change in the 2000s, demonstrating ambivalent and even contradictor attitudes toward learning Putonghua (Davison & Lai, 2007;Evans, 2013;Tse, Shum, Ki, & Chan, 2007). ...
... However, research has shown that many Hong Kong people are still unprepared for the policy change in the 2000s, demonstrating ambivalent and even contradictor attitudes toward learning Putonghua (Davison & Lai, 2007;Evans, 2013;Tse, Shum, Ki, & Chan, 2007). In sum, Hong Kong is gradually transitioning from diglossia to triglossia (Poon, 2010). It should be noted that the statistics and figures are far from enough to understand the complex linguistic situation in Hong Kong and merely relying on those figures will lead to neglect of some significant issues. ...
