ENGLSummer2008 Issue

3rd Talking Across the World Conference

Intonation in English workshop

Latest research activities

FCOM Postgraduate Research Symposium

Study Tour to Beijing

ENGLink is publishedby the Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Contact for contributions or further information about the articles:

Email:egdept@polyu.edu.hk

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Newsletter of the Department of EnglishThe Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Students Stage Classical Drama Pride and Prejudice

On May 6 and 7, students of the MA in English Language Teaching (MAELT) program put on a dramatisation of the Jane Austen classic, Pride and

Prejudice. This text is a great challenge, in its combination of formal prose and strong emotions. For class members to learn to speak the English of that time was demanding, as it involved perceiving, reproducing, and using customs of social interaction that are quite different from our own rather informal times. Class members were highly motivated, and successfully created memorable interpretations of Mr Darcy and his wealthy friends, the Bennet family, and other characters.

As part of the subject requirements for Drama and Language Learning, students learned stage management and play production, as well as staging and acting techniques. Much rehearsal time was spent on integrating accent and speech with movement and character interactions. Students applied improvisation, as well as various theories of acting, to explore the characters they played. They kept rehearsal worksheets, to log their efforts to get inside their particular character, and to track changes in their understanding of their work. Written assignments explored differences between our contemporary experiences and that of the eighteenth century characters , in areas inc luding movement, interpersonal conflict, gender roles, social class, and cultural transposition.

More than 200 high school students from various Hong Kong areas came to see the play, and stayed to chat with the actors afterwards. The department faculty member Dr Christina DeCoursey directed the show. MAELT students who were not in the class volunteered to help with seating school groups and other practical matters. The MAELT students were joined by some undergraduate actors from the department and the Institutes of Textiles and Clothing.

The cast of the play and Dr Christina DeCoursey (last row, third from right).

Secondary school students are excited about the close encounter with some of the characters after the play.

Event Highlights

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The 3rd Talking Across the World Conference

ITES, BPO members and language experts from around the world gathered at the campus of GEAR Innovative

International School in Bangalore on 25 - 26 April, 2008, for the 3rd Talking Across the World (TAW) Conference. The conference was supported by English Departmental funding, and sponsored by the British Council in South India and Logica. This international conference provided a unique opportunity for around 80 global participants, academics, industry trainers and managers, to share research concerns and outcomes related to communication in the Information Technology Enabled Service (ITES) industry.

An impressive group of world wide academics and industry experts from Europe, Australia and Asia presented and discussed strategies and solutions at the conference. The conference received extremely positive feedback from all involved, especially the plenary talks by the British Council sponsored speaker Barry Tomalin on intercultural training and Dr Jane Lockwood on English language assessment in Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) industry. The conference generated new ideas, bridged disciplinary boundaries, and established a forum where research, practice, knowledge and concerns could be shared between participants. The 3rd TAW conference extended the successful run of two earlier conferences held in the Philippines, and the organising committee are now planning the 4th TAW.

3rd TAW Conference Opening Ceremony at the outdoor auditorium. Guests officiated the ceremony (in the middle from left to right): Dr Catherine Nickerson (Conference chair), Mr Mitch Locsin (Global Business Development Executive, Logica), Mr Chris Gibson (Director of the British Council for South India), Mr M. Srinivasan (Chairman of GEAR Foundation, Bangalore) and Dr Gail Forey (Conference chair)

Dr. Gail Forey (standing, in blue dress) chaired the first parallel session on “Investigating accent accommodation in Indian call centre agents” by Dr Claire Cowie from the University of Edinburgh.

PolyU Consultation Day 2008

This year’s PolyU Consultation Day for JUPAS Applicants was held on 24 May. The department’s consultation sessions for the new BA in English

Studies for the Professions programme were attended by some 230 current Form 7 students. Ten students from the current BA in Language Studies for the Professions programme shared their study and student life with the participated students. Some also joined the tours to the department’s computer and multi-media laboratories to understand more about the learning facilities available to students.

Exhibition at the conference

Department Updates

Promotion of Academic Staff

Dr Stephen Evans, Dr Gail Forey and Dr Xu Xunfeng have recently been promoted

from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor. Congratulations!

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New Computer Laboratory

After several months of renovation and technical work, the new computer laboratory of the department is now ready

for use. The new laboratory at QR502 can accommodate 32 students and is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities including a digital visualiser, an interactive board and an AV system for audio and video broadcast. The existing computer laboratory at AG314 will also be upgraded soon to provide students an even better learning environment.

The brand-new computer laboratory uses notebook computers to increase the capacity of the room.

Upcoming Workshop: Intonation in English by William Greaves (1 – 4 September 2008)

This four-day intensive course will introduce participants to two computer programs, PRAAT and CORPUS TOOL, and to Intonation in the Grammar

of English by Michael Halliday and William Greaves.

PRAAT is an excellent tool which can be used in virtually any computer for very sophisticated phonetic analysis. The instructor will make extensive use of PRAAT to introduce the patterns of English intonation.

CORPUS TOOL is a new and more powerful successor to Mick O’Donnell’s SYSTEMIC CODER. The instructor will demonstrate and use only one of the many features in the program: the creation and editing of system networks. It is far easier to do this with CORPUS TOOL than with editing programs such as Word or graphics programs such as Paint.

Prof. William Greaves, the workshop instructor, is a Senior Scholar at York University in Toronto, where he is a member of the Glendon College English Department and the Graduate Programme in English. In collaboration with Michael Halliday he has been working on Intonation in English for about a decade. During that time he has taught courses in intonation ranging from a few days to six months in a number of countries: Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Egypt, England, Finland, India, Israel, and Japan.

The course includes four lecture hours per day, plus “hands on” work each day in a language laboratory (optional). Registration can be done online at the website of the workshop (http://www.engl.polyu.edu.hk/events/intonworkshop2008). The maximum number of participants is 60 and place is allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.

Dr Stephen Evans

Dr Gail Forey

Dr Xu Xunfeng

Department Updates

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Academic staff have discussion on some issues in groups.

Review and Forward Looking at Departmental Retreat

Before the 2007/08 academic year comes to an end, the department organised its semi-annual retreat on 10 and 11 June 2008 to allow

colleagues to share the work they have done as well as to discuss the plans and arrangements for the next academic year. One of the encouraging achievements for the department in the past year is to expand its MA programmes to mixed mode and have recruited its first group of 48 full-time MA students, with 28 coming the Chinese mainland.

Also, the PolyU strategic plan for 2008-2012 will be available soon and colleagues took the chance to brainstorm on strategies for tackling future challenges. It is the first time for the department to hold a retreat for two days and it gave more time for in-depth discussion on various topics.

Research Seminars by Prof. Anna-Brita Stenström

Prof. Anna-Brita Stenström is well-known for her academic and research contributions in the fields of corpus linguistics,

sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse markers, conversation analysis, and adolescent talk. She has conducted two research seminars for the department in June:

1.FromSlangtoSlanguage (12 June 2008)

In this talk, Prof. Stenström argued that it is difficult to draw a line between slang proper and slangy language in general. She discussed the dilemma on the basis of extracts from COLT (The Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language). This leads up to a model of ‘slanguage’, a term that she found appropriate for the slangy language used by the London teenagers, and which in addition to ‘proper’ slang words (words defined as ‘slang’ in current dictionaries) includes taboo words and ‘vogue’ words as well as the teenagers’ particular use of pragmatic markers. She also described the model in some detail.

2.Corpus-basedContrastivePragmatics:PerspectivesfromYouthLanguage

(4 June 2008)

The first part of this talk is devoted to the fact that youth language should be given more attention in linguistic research and to a description of its main characteristics. This is followed by a brief descriptions of the only three youth language corpora that are generally accessible on the internet. The second part of the talk is devoted to a cross-linguistic comparison of the use of the most conspicuous pragmatic markers in English and Spanish youth language, which takes participants to the intriguing question whether certain features of youth language are universal.

Research

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Latest Activities by the Research Centre for Professional Communication in English (RCPCE)

1.CPDSeminarforHongKongSurveyingProfessionals

The seminar “Enhancing English language proficiency and achieving communicative competence for surveyors in Hong Kong” was held on

19 March 2008 on PolyU campus. Professor Winnie Cheng introduced various ways to achieve communicative competence in surveying, through discussing real-life examples collected in the Hong Kong surveying industry. About 100 members of the Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors (HKIS) and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors Hong Kong attended the seminar. Towards the end of the seminar, the participants were all engaged in a lively, practical discussion of various linguistic features in authentic letters from the government, developer, consultant and contractor in the surveying and construction engineering professions.

2.TalksforHKSARGovernmentOfficialLanguagesOfficers

Prof. Winnie Cheng was invited to give two seminars to more than thirty HKSAR Government Official Languages Officers on discourse analysis on 30

April and 7 May 2008. The seminars aimed to provide to the participants sound foundation of knowledge and analytical techniques, such as generic study, and socio-cultural and ideological perspectives in communication. Examples were drawn from authentic spoken and written texts in various business and professional contexts.

Prof. Winnie Cheng speaks at the seminar.

Mr Simon Kwok Chi-wo, Vice Chairman of the HKIS, presents a souvenir to Prof. Winnie Cheng.

3.“Languageuseintheprofessionalworld”Survey

A large-scale questionnaire survey of professionals from Hong Kong’s four key industries (financial services, trading and logistics, tourism,

and professional services) has been successfully carried out in April and May. The survey, led by Dr Stephen Evans, was an update of the one carried out in 1999 and was designed to investigate patterns of language use in current written and spoken professional communication in Hong Kong. Apart from the traditional paper format, an online survey e-form has been developed to match with the professional communication practice in the internet era.

With the support of our alumni and local professional organisations, e.g. the Hong Kong Securities Institute, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, etc., we have received 2,030 responses. The data generated from this survey is now being analysed. The findings will be valuable for planners and policy makers in the public sector, senior professionals in the private sector, and researchers, course designers and teachers in the higher education sector.

Research

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First Faculty of Communication Postgraduate Research Symposium 2008

The First Faculty of Communication Postgraduate Research Symposium 2008, which was jointly organized by the

Department of English (ENGL) and the Department of Chinese & Bilingual Studies (CBS), was held at the PolyU campus earlier. The symposium aimed to bring together postgraduate students and researchers in Hong Kong to contribute to a stimulating and dynamic exchange of ideas on linguistics and applied linguistics in Chinese, English, or other languages, cultural and communication studies and translation studies.

Over 50 participants from different universities in Hong Kong joined the one-day symposium. Professor Shi-xu, Director, Institute of Discourse & Cultural Studies and Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies, Zhejiang University, China delivered a keynote speech on “Contemporary Chinese Media Discourse with the West: An equilibrium approach”. This paper examined how official Chinese media resist textually and contextually US hegemony on the issue of human rights. It was argued that the Chinese propensity for equilibrium and opposition to cultural dominance characterize the Chinese media discourse of human rights. The speech drew a lot of interest from the participants.

In addition, 34 postgraduate research students presented their papers and shared their learning experiences during the breaks and at a lunch hosted by the Faculty of Communication. The symposium was very well-received and it was announced that there will be 2nd Symposium in 2009.

Participants during Q & A session

Participants of the one-day Symposium

Participants at Morning Tea

Prof. Shi-xu delivers his keynote speech at the symposium

Students and Alumni News

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BAELT Study Tour to Beijing

Sixteen students from the final cohort of the BA in English Language Teaching (BAELT) participated in a study tour to

Beijing in mid-May. They were accompanied by Dr Stephen Evans and Mr Francis Low.

One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to the elite Tsinghua High School, which (as its name suggests) is affiliated to Tsinghua University. The students were given an introduction to the school by the Vice Principal, Mr Shi Ping, and were then taken on a tour of the campus, which adjoins the University. Our students were also given the opportunity to teach some of the English classes, which they accomplished with their characteristic enthusiasm, verve and creativity. The Tsinghua students thoroughly enjoyed the lessons, and their teachers were very impressed with our students’ teaching skills. We are very grateful to one of our full-time MAELT students, Annie Zhang Shumin, for helping to arrange the visit. Annie will resume her duties as an English teacher at the school after she completes her degree.

Other highlights of the trip included a sharing session with Baihang University students who will act as volunteers at the Olympics and visits to the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace.

The group at the sportsground of Tsinghua High School.

BAELT students give an English class to the secondary students.

Sharing session with volunteers of Beijing Olympics.

Graduating BALSP Students Bid Farewell to Teachers

The last day of lecture class for the final year students of BA in Language Studies for the Professions (BALSP)

was particularly memorable. As the first cohort of graduates from the program, they are excited about the challenges to be faced but also want to take the opportunity to thank the teachers.

Programme coordinators Dr Cathy Wong of the department and Dr Roxana Fung of the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies attended the gathering organised by the students. They both received a very meaningful thank-you card from the students.

We have confidence in our future!

Student representatives present a thank-you card to Dr Cathy Wong (third from left).

Students and Alumni News

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Alumni Sharing: Freddy Law’s Unique Experience with AIESEC

Freddy is a graduate of BA in Language Studies with Business in 2007. He has recently completed a challenging job in India and

let’s see what he has to share about his experience:

“After graduated, I became a Googler in India. My choice seems different from most of my classmates, but I think it is a good chance to experience something different. Google is a really cool company and India is a fast growing huge market. Working as a HR, hiring for the engineering managers, I interacted with senior people everyday. As an English Department student, we have our advantage for better communication with all other international people. I really encourage you to step out of your comfort zone, go to the world for a while and find out your dream. After India, I would go to Macedonia for a year.

I got all these kind of special experience by joining AIESEC. The current president of AIESEC PolyU is BALSP student Karman Cheung. If you want to join AIESEC and experience the difference, contact Karman at karman.cheung@polyu.aiesec.hk. If you want to know more about AIESEC, find out from www.aiesec.org. All the best English students!”

Mentors and Mentees Cultivate the Interest of Organic Farming

Participants of the Mentorship Programme enjoyed a relaxing and educational afternoon in May by joining an

organic farming workshop at Produce Green Foundation. The site is a countryside in Fanling with over 19,000m2 of farming space. The group learnt to make their own organic breads and also practiced the basic organic farming steps at the farms. After having enough exercise at the farms, everyone found the breads made by themselves were particularly delicious!

Mentors and mentees are eager to taste the freshly baked organic breads made by themselves.

Mentors and mentees work hard in their farms to make them a good place for the seeds to grow.