ELC Winners of Faculty Award for Excellent Service
Congratulations to a team of colleagues from the English Language Centre for winning the Faculty Award for Excellent Service. The team consists of five ELC teachers: Dr Julia Chen, Dr Juliana Chau, Ms Shari Lughmani, Dr Svetlana Chigaeva, Miss Winnie Wu; and two supporting staff members: Miss Emily Chan and Ms Marie Ng.
Last year, they provided professional development to over 40 secondary school English language teachers whose students will be taking the first HKDSE exams in 2012. The services provided by this ELC team included workshops for secondary school teachers in assessment for learning, reading constructs, writing constructs; as well as training in the setting and moderation of a reading and a writing assessment paper, which were completed by around 950 students. An online marking platform was developed and 36 teachers from a number of schools used it for diagnostic marking of student writing. Success with this project has led to other projects, including further training and support offered to senior secondary school teachers of English Language, and language training for S5 students who are less proficient in English.
Julia Chen
Project Co-ordinator
New English Language Curriculum
The English Language Centre is offering a new suite of subjects for students in the 4-year curriculum, covering general English, academic English and discipline-related English. Students entering a PolyU undergraduate degree programme will be required to take two 3-credit English language subjects, preferably in the first four semesters of their study, to fulfil their Language and Communication Requirement (LCR). Local students will be placed according to their DSE results. Table 1 shows the LCR English language subjects students will need to study.
| Table 1 LCR English language subjects for students with DSE English Language scores of 3 or above |
| HKDSE English Language Score | First LCR English subject |
Second LCR English subject |
5 / 5* / 5** |
Advanced English for University Studies |
(a) Advanced English Reading and Writing Skills |
4 |
English for University Studies |
Advanced English for University Studies |
3 (with no sub-scores of 2 in any DSE English Language papers) |
Practical English for University Studies |
English for University Studies |
Students with sub-scores of 2 in any of the four DSE English Language papers will need to complete one or two 2-credit English Language Enhancement (ELE) subjects before they can take the subject Practical English for University Studies. See Table 2 below.
| Table 2 LCR English language subjects for students with overall DSE English Language score of 3 and sub-scores of 2 |
| HKDSE English Language Score | English Language Enhancement |
First LCR English subject |
Second LCR English subject |
3 with one sub-score of 2 |
1 English Language Enhancement subject |
Practical English for University Studies |
English for University Studies |
3 with two sub-scores of 2 |
2 English Language Enhancement subjects |
Practical English for University Studies |
English for University Studies |
In the new 4-year curriculum, students also need to take four general education subjects, called CAR (Cluster Area Requirement) subjects, and must fulfill an English Reading and English Writing Requirement in one of these subjects. These CAR subjects can be offered by any department of the University but reading and writing support is given by the ELC. Students are provided online lectures and resources to help them plan, organize and write their assignments and then submit two drafts in the middle and end of semester to ELC and receive detailed feedback. This process helps them develop their writing and achieve a better writing style. This support from ELC also ensures that students final draft submitted to parent department is of a higher quality.
Besides LCR English and English Reading and Writing Requirements, students in the 4-year curriculum will also be taking discipline related English language subjects. We will introduce these subjects in future issues of the ELC Newsletter.
Julia Chen & Shari Lughmani
Amir, Hassan and Sohrab, Oh My!
On Wednesday 30 November, Cameron Darcy and I attended the awards ceremony for the winners of the READ@PolyU essay competition. Why were we there, still in dire need of a morning Earl Grey or Cuppa Joe, you ask? Well, it just so happens that students from each of our Kite Runner reading groups were receiving awards for their essay entries. Runner-up student, Wendy Wei Conghui (FB) from my group wrote a piece titled "The Existence of Hassan," delineating how Hassan (Amir's half-brother) is represented via three different lenses throughout the novel: the physical plane in life; Amir's memory in death; and through Sohrab, his son, in spirituality.
Grand prize winner of the iPad 2, Luu Thien Minh (FB), Cameron's student, crafted a story about the meaning of friendship, making parallels between Afghanistan and his home country Vietnam and how people journey and grow as they travel between their homes and foreign lands.
ELC Centre director, Bruce Morrison, was in attendance, as well as Vice President Walter Yuen and READ leader Christina Chau. Cameron and I were under the misconception that the teachers who had mentored the winning students would be receiving extended vacation time and fully paid return airfare to and hotel accommodations at the Four Seasons in Bali, but that must have been a misprint in our READ contracts.
Dean A F Gui
Book Fair and Author Sharing Session
To further cultivate an interest in reading English books among PolyU students and staff, ELC will once again be organising the ELC English Book Fair with the help of Swindon Book Company Limited in the period 15-17 February 2012, 12:00 to 20:30 daily. Last time, a lot of good books were introduced in the Fair. The scale of the Fair will be larger this time and we have a lot more book recommendations at attractive prices plus two reading sharing sessions for you. So come to CILL (A305) between 15 and 17 February to find the books you like.
David Wong
Book Fair Coordinator
As part of the book fair the ELC Reading Group will arrange a sharing session with one of Hong Kong's foremost contemporary English language novelists, Xu Xi, the award-winning author of nine books of fiction & essays, and editor of three anthologies of Hong Kong literature in English. In this sharing session Ms Xu will share her thoughts on her favourite books and what they mean to her. The session will be in the afternoon of 15 February. Look out for further details on campus.
Also as part of the book fair, the ELC Reading Group facilitator, Ms Sannie Tang, will also conduct a seminar on English books you might find interesting to read, particularly if you are not sure what to try next. This will be part of the CILL seminar series. Again look for further details on campus nearer the time.
We would like to congratulate the ELC’s John Smith on winning the RTHK/SCMP Top Story competition with his story, A special gift, which was published in the paper in January. We hope to catch up with him in our next issue.
A Community of Poets Cultivated at the ELC
“Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before” (Audre Lorde).
And so went a succession of my own poems, laying down the foundation to a succession of publications, and a succession of discussions around drug addiction, home-cooked meals, summer wildfires, wishing for things we cannot have, and wanting to belong. It was fortuitous when Vaughan Rapatahana tracked me down in November, bestowing upon me the honour of having two of my works published in issue 31 of Blackmail Press, an online literary journal based in New Zealand. Vaughan was guest editor for that particular issue. I had apparently neglected to include any contact information after submission of “Macanese Condition” and “If I Were Different,” but thank goodness—in this case—that the Internet knows no privacy, as a word search on my name pulled up several hits with my contact information. To make the world even smaller, I discovered Vaughan now lives in Hong Kong, and this led to an invitation to read my poems at the Fringe Club later that month to a rooftop full of poets and groupies who braved the darkness and the rain, nibbling at Thai fish cakes and sipping carrot juice, competing with whirling mixers and dinging microwaves over at the food bar, and half-drunken theatre-goers from the floor below.
This led to another opportunity for creative writers at the Centre when internationally renowned writer Shirley Geok-lin Lim came to visit us from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Professor Lim was gracious enough to spend some time with us at the Centre, tempting us with cheese and wine during materials development pow wows, while we exhausted her, picking away at her brain for all the goodies it came with. Then on Friday the 16th our time with professor Lim came to a close, wrapping up with an evening of poetry supported by the Department of English. Christina DeCoursey and I hosted the evening, in quasi coffee house style, feasting on wine and a Christmas spread of cheeses, olives, grapes and crackers. Shirley Lim kicked off the evening with a couple of poems from a book of her poetry. Yours truly read a few of his unpublished poems and one recently published in Transnational Literature (based in Australia), “Good Laundry Day.” Our own Shari Lughmani also read some of her own works: one short but poignant piece (“Different at seven”) about her daughter which brought many of us to tears, and another work written in Urdu about falling in love for the very first time (“Ghazal”). Others in attendance from the Centre included Charles Griffith, Cameron Darcy, Caitlin Feenstra, Phil Todd and Winnie Wu, and we ended the evening wanting more: more poetry, more gatherings, and more visiting literary scholars.
Dean A. F. Gui
After their first semester here at PolyU we asked our new teachers to introduce themselves and tell us what they think of PolyU.
Hi there! My name’s Caitlin which is a bit difficult to say so you can call me Cait if you like. I’m from NZ – a small, green, sparsely populated island where people love playing rugby and going bare-foot. I taught many students from China in NZ and they told me NZ was very boring because there were no people on the streets and the shops shut too early at night. Now I am here in Hong Kong, I can see what they mean. But NZ is very beautiful and if you want a quiet life you should go there! I taught for many years in NZ and I also taught in mainland China for 3 months, in Shandong province. I enjoy teaching here at Poly U. I think students here have very good English and work very hard, especially compared with university students in NZ.
Hi, I’m Carina Lam. Before working here, I spent a number of years teaching in a secondary school and also a number of years working in an office and doing further studies. I enjoy watching TV (but not TVB dramas), shopping (good mental detox and physical exercise but really bad for the purse!) reading and playing the piano.
Hi everyone, I am Carrie Tsang. I am currently doing my doctorate in London and teaching full time in the ELC. I am also working in the language testing team of the Centre with special research focus on test development and investigation of how tests can motivate students. I enjoy traveling and learning different languages. At the moment I am doing French and Japanese and would love to learn other new languages as well. I have met a lot of lovely students here and I hope to catch up with you some time.
Hello! I’m Dawn and I'm originally from Halifax, Canada. I only came to Hong Kong this year and I absolutely love it. I am love the food, weather and people. I have spent the last 5 years in Seoul, South Korea teaching at universities. I'm looking forward to getting to know more about Hong Kong and Chinese culture. Hope to see you in my classes.
I’m Irene Lee. I'm quite a reserved person until you get to know me a tad better. As such, I like activities that don't require me to talk a lot (ironic I know since I make a living standing in front of a large audience and talking away!). Chief of the things I like to do is to read and then reflect. You can read my blog (irenelee.wordpress.com), for my latest reflections, rants and raves! Next, I like to participate in art, either viewing people's work to draw inspiration or creating on my own! So, I enjoy capturing moments on my camera or iphone and posting it to My Gallery page on my blog. Finally, I enjoy cycling in the gym (they call it RPM = Revolutions Per Minute) and running. The repetitive nature of these sports helps me to unwind and clarify my thoughts!
A big HELLO to everyone! My name is Mary Cheng. I am delighted to join ELC at PolyU. I have been teaching English Language for over ten years and love teaching students as motivated, enthusiastic and hard working as you. When I am relaxing, I love spending time with friends, reading, traveling, and staying physically active. My first semester at PolyU has been exciting; and I look forward to meeting you all.
Hi, I'm Michelle Roggenkamp. I joined the ELC in August all the way from the Hong Kong Institute of Education in Tai Po. I have enjoyed my first semester here at the PolyU, my colleagues and students have been very helpful. I am sure that semester 2 is going to be even better!
Hello there! I’m Peter Birch and though I come from sunny Lancashire, in England, I’ve been living in Asia for the last 25 years. My claim to fame is that I won a prize for my painting of a giraffe when I was seven years old. Consequently, as well as travelling to countries with exotic wild animals roaming around I enjoy looking at works of art. Temple art and architecture was one of the things that first attracted me to this part of the world. My other passion is eating and so it’s not surprising that the places where I’ve lived and taught English (Hong Kong, Thailand, Cambodia and Greece) also feature a strong food culture. I like teaching in Hong Kong because education is highly valued and students are friendly. I’m always impressed by how capable of learning a foreign language my students can be.
We would also like to welcome these new members of staff to our teaching team this semester: Michelle Ho, Aditi Jhaveri, Amy Ma, Thomas Northern, Gigi To, Jeff Watson and James Zvi.
In order to encourage students to study English and develop as independent language learners, CILL organized a series of seminars. The first CILL seminar: Nietzsche, Freud and Marx: How geniuses read, and how to read like them,was well received, with 23 participants on 19 October. Mr Alfred Lee, currently a language instructor at ELC, shared how we can read like Nietzsche, Freud and Marx, three post-modern geniuses who challenged the ideas of Plato and many other Western philosophers. He summed up their methods will in ONE word, and in THREE easy steps so that we can understand how to read the works of a genius and read like a genius. This fascinating workshop exposed secrets and revealed shortcuts to greatness, freedom and fun.
The second CILL seminar took place on 16 November when Mr. Frank Miu, a financial and management consultant with a diverse career with over 30 years’ experience in consulting, corporate, legal, accounting and educational positions, delivered a talk on The easy way to study English to get to Harvard. Also a former President of the Harvard Club of Hong Kong, Mr Miu shared with participants how to improve their methods of learning English during his talk. Both seminars were filmed and students can watch the VCDs in CILL.
As technology has quickly advanced in the past few years, the original design and nature of self-access centres needs to change. There is a plan for CILL to become bilingual in future. Some Putonghua materials, focusing on preparation for the Putonghua examinations, are being sorted and will be moved to CILL. Besides this, a number of consulates have donated to CILL some books and materials on the cultures of different countries, including France, Korea, Germany and Japan. It is hoped that the reconfiguration of CILL will better help students improve their languages effectively and broaden their horizons by learning different cultures.
Joe Ching
CILL Co-ordinator
In line with the PolyU's promotion of reading, the CILL team recommends a 'Book of the Month' each month. Background information, movie DVDs and the readers are provided in CILL for our users to consult as they read the books, and we hope these extra resources will enhance their reading experience. The resources relating to our February Book of the Month, A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin are already in a folder near the CILL entrance, waiting for you to consult them!
We hope you enjoy the books we have chosen. Here are our book picks for the rest of this academic year:
January: Unknown by Didier Van Cauwelaert (Translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti)
February: A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin
March: The Broker by John Grisham
April: Exile by Denis Mina
May: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
June: The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
Julu: The Bourne Supremacy by Robert Ludlum
Augest: Stolen Magic by M. J. Putney
Joe Ching
CILL Co-ordinator
