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This paper reports on the strategies used by an English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teacher to help law students whose first language is Chinese in an English-for-law course learn and understand how to negotiate legal texts and ordinances and connect them with the concerns of people in the real world. The example of the recently enacted Human Organ Transplant Ordinance in Hong Kong is used to show how legal rhetorical objectives can be realized through a series of forensic tasks that connect with the real world concerns of both medical professionals and the lay relatives of transplant recipients. Underlying the paper is a philosophy of ESL teaching that prizes the interdependence of language and content, and the need to raise students' language awareness to maintain clear relevance to their legal studies--an approach aimed at sustaining student interest while raising their awareness of why ordinances are structured the way they are. Real-world case studies are used rather than textbook grammar exercises in order to weave the linguistic agenda into authentic contexts and purposes. Six appendices are included: "Legal Reasoning Moves in an Ordinance-Legislative 'Actions'"; "Circumstances, Conditions, and Exceptions--Hedging the Legal Action"; "First Four Sections of the Human Organ Transplant Ordinance"; an article from the English language Hong Kong press "Medical Bureaucracy Blamed for Fatal Delays, Pre-Transplant Deaths Anger Doctor"; "Two Routes to Amending the Human Organ Transplant Ordinance"; and "LegCo Subcommittee on Human Organ Transplant Ordinance, Extract from the Minutes of the Meeting of 8 Jan. 1999." (KFT)

Increasingly, language is seen as the interpretive medium by which knowledge is constructed and communication is carried out within and across disciplines, as well as the way power and authority are exercised, renewed, and protected. This paper explores the prospects of raising awareness of this social and political view of language across the wider educational community, specifically of three communities that should triangulate in this enterprise: subject teachers, their students, and the "mediating" language teachers. The social, educational, and political implications for these communities of talking at cross purposes about language and knowledge are discussed, and the possibilities of their fruitful collaboration is explored. It is suggested that the more that the different communities interact and collaborate, and the more they talk about their intersecting interests, the more a shared discourse may emerge. A description of an interdisciplinary collaboration in developing a classification of micro-skills for offering structured feedback on student writing is described. (Author/JL)

A November 1990 recommendation by the Hong Kong government's education department to adopt a language-streaming policy is discussed. The policy would have children tested and assigned to English-medium or Chinese-medium instruction in the sixth year of elementary school. Implications of this development are examined from the point of view of higher education and from the perspective of providing equal education for all children. Disadvantages to children taught in Chinese and proceeding to higher education are given special attention. Two alternatives are proposed: (1) delaying streaming decisions for an additional 2 years; (2) offering an opportunity for Chinese-medium students to start on their college preparation early; and (3) having students in both streams follow the same curriculum but having Chinese-medium students use the final secondary year to prepare for postsecondary study. It is proposed that because of mandates for higher education to increase enrollment, reduce costs, and compete with other English-speaking countries' universities, the best solution might be for higher education to offer a college-preparatory year for Chinese-medium students. (MSE)

English is used as a second-language (EL2) medium of instruction in a wide range of developing countries, notably in East and South Asia, the Middle East, and many parts of Africa, often in the face of a vigorous resurgence of indigenous and regional cultures and languages. A discussion of this situation illustrates some of the social, political, and educational factors that make the implementation of EL2-medium educational policies problematic for developing countries. The discussion then looks into the case of Hong Kong, with its particular linguistic and socio-political situation, and the implications of an EL2-medium education system for an ostensibly egalitarian education policy. The discussion concludes by examining recent attempts by language planners and educators in Hong Kong, in both secondary and higher education, to make the education system more responsive to the sociolinguistic and educational requirements and realities in the territory while retaining a strong EL2-medium profile. (Author/MSE)

There are qualities or organizational principles in discourse that determine its information structure and contribute to its communicative dynamism. A "wave" model of discourse analysis shows graphically how each successive item of new information in a text provides a platform for the next new item, or "wave," of information. The model is based on the following concepts: (1) new information tends to come near the end of information units, and assumed or understood information at the beginning; (2) information tends to be ordered from left to right in the information unit according to its degree of informativity; (3) in descriptive scientific texts, there is a tendency for the structural/concrete to precede the functional/abstract; and (4) the degree of informativity of a clause or sentence can determine its position in the left-right hierarchy of a sentence or thematic unit. Using the model, the student can ask questions to test the purpose and appropriateness of an utterance by matching what the utterance seems to be answering against what it should answer in light of contextual and rhetorical expectation. The model is illustrated using a paragraph classifying three muscle types in the body. A brief bibliography is included. (MSE)

Instruction in English for academic purposes can be enhanced by an approach using metadiscourse, or an awareness of the operations of discourse. Student competence in this area would improve the ability to appreciate the strategies of academic writers, describe the arguments of others, and write academic essays, particularly introductions. In teaching academic reading and writing, it is vital to emphasize the value of paraphrasing. This requires articulation at a level of abstraction most second-language students have little experience with. One method, the study cycle approach, takes students through a communication cycle in stages similar to those used in other subject areas, including: access to information presented in academic English; analysis of the underlying conceptual content and rhetorical design; synthesis and organization of the resulting information; and articulation in English of a range of academic response types (summary, interpretation, argument, etc.). Materials using this approach should be designed: (1) using a matrix of concepts underlying the principal text used; (2) emphasizing organization of information; and (3) focusing on the transitions across levels of abstraction and the importance of advanced vocabulary training. A brief bibliography, list of metadiscourse vocabulary, and additional teacher material are appended. (MSE)