In second language (L2) vocabulary research, much attention has been paid to how learners can be supported to acquire vocabulary and how teachers can be better prepared to teach vocabulary in the language classroom. As research efforts have been devoted largely to exploring effective vocabulary teaching strategies and techniques, it remains unclear what teachers know and believe regarding L2 vocabulary acquisition beyond the commonplace conception that teaching and learning are interrelated. The present study explored the epistemological and pedagogical beliefs about vocabulary development reported by four in-service English language teachers in Hong Kong through in-depth semi-structured interviews. It also examined the major factors shaping those beliefs. The results suggest that although the interviewees considered vocabulary teaching to be pivotal, they seemed to focus only on certain aspects of lexical knowledge and rely on a limited range of strategies in teaching vocabulary. Implications for L2 education and teacher development are drawn. Keywords Teacher professional development Á In-service teachers' beliefs Á English as a second language Á Vocabulary teaching and learning Á Hong Kong
In response to the limited vocabulary size of its undergraduates, an independent vocabulary learning platform, VLearn was designed and launched in a university in Hong Kong. As an elearning environment that supports self-directed vocabulary learning of Chinese learners, the primary aim of VLearn is to equip users with appropriate knowledge and skills for vocabulary expansion. This paper introduces the contents of VLearn, and the theoretical underpinnings of its design. It also reports on the vocabulary learning experience of its users during an eight week evaluation study. Suggestions are made on how independent vocabulary building at higher education, as well as comprehensive vocabulary instruction at early years could be supported by means of technology.
Metadiscourse plays a significant role in determining the quality of writing. While a growing number of studies have investigated the use of metadiscourse by adult second language learners in academic writing at the tertiary level, studies on how secondary-level students adopt such linguistic resources in other genres, particularly in examination writing, remain few. The present study addresses this research gap by examining the distributions of metadiscourse markers in a corpus of 120 low-, medium-, and high-rated advice-giving texts (letters and reports) randomly selected from the Hong Kong public examination of English language writing, written by secondary-level Chinese learners of English. Using Hyland’s (2019) framework of metadiscourse, the study found considerable variation in the use of interactive and interactional metadiscourse across genres (letters vs. reports) and the final exam grades awarded to texts. Implications for teaching English to pre-tertiary Chinese writers are discussed with suggestions for future research.
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