What's new
International Conference on English Across the Curriculum 14/15 Dec 2015
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University was the venue for a two day International Conference on English Across the Curriculum that aimed to bring together academics from different disciplines and language teaching units to explore ways to enhance students' English in discipline content subjects. It was the first conference of its kind in Hong Kong and was supported by the UGC project "Professional Development in Enhancing English Across the Curriculum" (EAC). Feedback on the conference was overwhelmingly positive with full attendance at some of the presentations by ELC staff.
Keynote speakers
Professor Terry Myers Zawacki (Centre in the photo)
George Mason University, USA
Terry Myers Zawacki is an emerita professor of English at George Mason University, where she directed the nationally recognized Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program and the University Writing Center. Prior to her retirement, Prof. Zawacki was the recipient of the David J. King Award given annually to a faculty member who has made significant, long-term contributions to the overall educational excellence of the university; 
a University Excellence in Teaching award; and a "Students as Scholars" Mentor award.
Dr Ursula Wingate (Left in the photo)
King's College London, UK
Ursula Wingate is Senior Lecturer in Language in Education and works in the Centre for Language, Discourse and Communication at King's College London. Before moving to London, Ursula taught for eight years at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and four years at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research interests are in academic literacy, English language policies and practices, and language teaching methodology.
Professor Rainer Glaser (Right in the photo)
University of Missouri, USA
Dr. Rainer Ernst Glaser, Professor of Chemistry, studied chemistry and physics in Tübingen (Chem.-Dipl., 1984), at Berkeley (Ph.D., 1987), and at Yale (post-doctoral fellow, 1987-9). Glaser is a broadly interested physical organic chemistry and his group has published over 160 papers with support by ACS-PRF, NSF, and NIH. Glaser has always valued and enjoyed extensive collaborations with chemists, biochemists, physicists, mathematicians, astronomers, educators and journalists.
A staff development workshop on developing effective writing assignments was delivered by Prof Terry Myers Zawacki on 16 December 2015 in the English Language Centre. Alignment of writing assignments and subject learning goals was discussed. Staff from ELC as well as those from business,
engineering and health science disciplines from PolyU and three other institutions in Hong Kong attended the workshop. Participants shared their current practices of setting writing assignments, and considered ways to further improve one of their writing assignments.
EES - Excel@ English Scheme
Want to be one of the EES Stars this year? See the smiley faces in the photos – they were winners of the EES in 2014/15!
EES students have written glowing comments about their mentoring experience in this year’s EES survey so please join in.
"Many ways to improve English."
"DELTA Test comprehensively revealed the weaknesses and strengths of my English."
"Writing and speaking skills."
"Most satisfying – richness of sources online."
"My mentor helped me a lot to improve my English."
"Need more meeting times with the tutor."
"My tutor is a really great person and he has given me so much help and advice on English learning which benefits me a lot."
REGISTER again for Sem 2 mentoring. As usual, registration is open to all PolyU students in Weeks 1 and 2, 2016.
Make sure you complete the EES online quizzes, DELTA, and as many as the EES online activities- https://learn.polyu.edu.hk/ > EES
You will improve your English, score points, and win great prizes! The EES ends on 30 June 2016. Hurry!
Visit us at http://elc.polyu.edu.hk/EES or email eccill@polyu.edu.hk for queries.
New Teachers at the ELC
Jane Stokes
I am a teaching fellow at the ELC and have been teaching English in Hong Kong for nearly twenty years. My experience at tertiary level includes over twelve years' experience teaching students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, plus substantial materials writing and course design experience. My research interests are language assessment, and reflective writing.
I am from the red side of Manchester (if you don’t know what that refers to, think of football). Apart from that I really like travelling, especially to desert countries, and have been to Jordan and Egypt and thought the Valley of the Kings was very special. Another memorable travelling experience was being part of the crew for 9 days on a tall ship where the able bodied people were teamed with disabled people in a buddy system. We spent 9 days sailing to Denmark on the tall ship Tenacious.
Caroline Nixon
I am from Belfast, Northern Ireland and have been in Hong Kong for over four and a half years. I am interested in skills based teaching and really like chatting with students and getting to know more about them as individuals. Actually Hong Kong and Northern Ireland have something in common. Can you guess what it is?
Both places have a similar rock features. In Northern Ireland they are known as "The Giant’s Causeway".
I look forward to meeting more students next term. So if you see me around campus, do say hello.
*The three images used in this article are under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Sv tenacious by Patrick Wernhardt Columnar jointed basalt in Hong Kong by Clchen711 Giants-causeway-in-ireland by Sebd
MOOC Update
The ELC has teamed up with well-known business leaders and recruiters to develop a MOOC called "English@Work in Asia". Part 1 started on October 5th and covered job applications, CVs and cover letters, while Part 2 which started on November 22 teaches students how to prepare for a job interview.
English@Work in Asia has teamed up with international companies to offer special incentives to students in the MOOC.
Leighton Asia, a leading international construction company, headquartered in Hong Kong, is the latest company to join the ELC MOOC by offering positions of Trainee Engineer to the top performing MOOC students. This is ideally suited for final year students in the Faculty of Construction and Environment and the Faculty of Engineering.
Leighton joins Esquel, Deloitte and The Lan Kwai Fong Group in a partnership with us. The CVs of the first batch of students have been forwarded to our partner companies already. You can find out more about our collaborations by visiting our Partnerships + Jobs page, but students have to join the course to benefit from this scheme.
Here is a link for our latest sneak peek video: https://youtu.be/2jyIb1L1hrs
Join the course to find more details.
Find out more about English@Work in Asia: Job applications by visiting these sites:
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