CUHK
News Centre

The new four-year academic structure has prompted universities in Hong Kong to undertake undergraduate curriculum reform, in particular to strengthen students’ bilingual proficiency. The English Language Teaching Unit (ELTU) at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) recently held a conference to review the development and implementation of the new English teaching curriculum over the past two years. Language teaching professionals from Hong Kong and the Greater China region were invited to share their insights and teaching experiences, including two acclaimed academics, Prof. Constant Leung from King’s College London and Prof. Haixiao Wang from Nanjing University. 

Being an educational linguist, Prof. Constant Leung has broad research interests, which include curriculum development, assessment, education policy, and teacher professional development.  At the Conference, Professor Leung examined the curricular and pedagogic implications of English for classroom teaching and learning.  Prof. Haixiao Wang has been instrumental in a number of projects under the Ministry of Education in China for the development and reform of the teaching and learning of English at tertiary institutes in the Mainland.  He spoke on how colleges and universities across the mainland might innovate in their own curriculum, taking into account their educational orientations and relative strengths and weaknesses. 

Throughout the day, up to three dozen specialist workshops were presented by scholars and practitioners in English teaching. They focused on various curriculum domains and topics pertaining to language instruction in the tertiary education context. 

The day was rounded off by a panel discussion co-chaired by heads of English teaching centres from eight higher education institutes in Hong Kong.  The panelists related the challenges they faced in delivering vigorous curricula to their respective student populations, their approaches and successes.  Overall, the sentiment was positive, since the institutes had had two years of experience in providing new English curricula for the 334 New Senior Secondary (NSS) academic structure cohort.  Fine-tuning and renovations would still be carrying forward, when there students are progressing to their third and fourth years of study. 

The ELTU Conference 2014 was the fifth since 2010, in which language centres at local institutions gather on an annual basis to respond to curriculum challenges.  Previous hosting centres have included teaching units at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the University of Hong Kong and the City University of Hong Kong.