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This paper reports on the second phase of a cross-sectional study of pragmatic development in Hong Kong. The first phase (Rose, 2000) involved primary school students ages 7, 9 and 11. Participants in the present study were secondary school students in Forms 2, 4, and 6 (ages 13, 15 and 17). A questionnaire was designed to elicit requests, with scenarios derived through exemplar generation and variable values arrived at through two rounds of metapragmatic assessment. The variable values were therefore determined by the participants, not the researcher. The questionnaire was administered in Chinese, with participants instructed to record their responses in English using a recording device provided to them. Data were transcribed and analyzed by the author and a research assistant using the coding categories for requests developed in the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989). Results indicated ample evidence of pragmalinguistic development, particularly in what appeared to be the onset of pragmatic expansion in the Form 6 group's wider range of modals and the appearance of supportive moves. However, there was little evidence of sociopragmatic development, other than the increased occurrence of please in requests to higher status hearers.

Cooperative Learning (CL) has been adopted in many countries in recent years. This pilot study looked at a one-year investigation into the teaching of English in Hong Kong secondary school classrooms. The teachers were given support to assist them in designing and carrying out group learning activities. These were organized so that learning was dependent on the socially structured exchange of information between learners in the groups. The data indicated that there were no significant differences in the per formance of the experimental group. However, what did become clear were the difficulties of transferring laboratory-based studies of task performance to the realities of the curriculum-in-action in normal classroom conditions.