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This paper reports on a narrative inquiry of a Hong Kong female undergraduate student's second language (L2) learning experiences in an English-medium university in Hong Kong, with a focus on her participation in classroom oral activities and identity negotiation. Using ideas from situated learning theory and Norton's (2000) notions of identity and investment, the paper analyzes how the student negotiated her classroom participation and identities over the course of her studies in the university. Findings suggest that the student's classroom participation in the English-medium university appeared to be a complex and dynamic process which involved ongoing negotiations of identities, competence and membership in the classroom in response to the challenges she faced. It was found that the student's participation and identity (re)construction in the classroom were mediated by the contextual complexities in specific classroom communities and were contingent upon the agentive choices made by the student in investing in different classroom activities. Findings also indicate that the student's participation evolved over time alongside a changing sense of competence and showed signs of gradual yet non-linear progression from peripheral to full participation in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring students’ perspective on feedback is high on the research agenda following the comparatively lower satisfaction scores for assessment and feedback in the National Student Survey. However, limited research examines how teachers and students perceive the same feedback events in the post-secondary context. This case study fills the gap by comparing the views of two teachers and 20 first-year students on assessment feedback in an academic English module in a post-secondary institution in Hong Kong. Data collection methods involved documentation of feedback on marked assignments, recordings of verbal feedback sessions, stimulated-recall interviews with teachers, and focus group interviews with students. The conflicting beliefs indicated three problems: insufficient explanation of criteria and standards for feedback interpretation; use of praise for rapport building at a cost of feedback sincerity; limited uptake of error corrections in end-of-term assignments. Possible reasons behind the divergence are discussed. The paper argues that using praise to save students’ face may paradoxically heighten the tensions in feedback processes in a high-stakes assessment context. A more effective method is to foster students’ ‘feedback resilience’ to help them manage negative emotions in feedback processes. Recommendations for developing ‘feedback resilience’ are provided, and avenues for future research discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research in world Englishes centers on examining the linguistic features of a particular region. Such work can give the false impression of a collective homogeneous ideology of English within a geographic space. We refer to this limiting monolithic perspective of language ideology as 'the single linguistic narrative.' The present study builds on this body of work by investigating how often competing ideologies of English can circulate within a region. Focusing on the Hong Kong context, we adapt the concept of Bakhtinian heteroglossia to consider the simultaneous co-presence of varying ideologies of English. Through an analysis of self-narratives, we examine how Hong Kong university students construct expectations regarding how English should be used and what the colonial language means to their regional identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the evolution of the English-language speech community in Hong Kong since the early 1840s. Inspired by Schneider’s (2007) innovative “Dynamic Model”, the article examines textual and statistical data derived from a range of hitherto unexploited archival sources, including a historical corpus of English-language newspapers, confidential Colonial Office correspondence, and government records. Changes in the size and composition of the English-language speech community are tracked through a diachronic analysis of government censuses, school enrolments, lists of jurors, and letters to the press. The results of this analysis support Schneider’s contention that the 1960s marked an important turning point in Hong Kong’s linguistic history in that it presaged a substantial, education-driven increase in the numbers and proportion of English users in the territory. Despite the significant expansion of the English-using community in the past four decades, the dominant theme of public discourse about English has been that of “declining standards”. While the existence of a “complaint tradition” accords with the predictions of the Dynamic Model, it is perhaps not widely known that this tradition is a long-standing one. The present article traces this tradition back to the era of the Opium Wars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]