Objectives

Overall, this CoP aims to connect and build a network of PolyU academic staff members across faculties/schools/centres both from the research and the teaching tracks to enrich the knowledge and skills in English for

1) conducting university teaching and for coaching students’ writing and speaking abilities; and
2) developing teaching and learning related scholarly writing such as project and research proposals, and academic work for bringing impact to their professional knowledge and the teaching in similar areas.

Specifically, the CoP aims to provide a network for staff to share resources, knowledge and expertise on English use and skills to:

• enable the effective delivery of lectures and other communication with students in an English-medium context through exploring classroom language instruction and speaking features;
• explore the linguistic and organizational characteristics of students’ written and spoken tasks in different genres and their common problems in engaging in these assessments;
• enable the effective use of language for assignment task sheets and examination papers in order to achieve address the intended outcomes of learning better; and
• prepare grant proposals and academic writing for teaching and/or professional-related topics that will support a culture of producing quality scholarly writing for sharing and enriching professional knowledge

It is conjectured that student understanding of content knowledge, learning outcomes and productive skills will improve as the staff member more effectively uses English in the classroom and in the preparation of assessment rubrics and examination papers. In addition, with the additional language resources acquired from the CoP activities, the staff member will be better equipped in their guiding of students’ written and spoken work. A better understanding of language and written characteristics in essential research elements undertaken in scholarly writing such as literature reviews, abstract writing and citations provides guides and exemplary examples for typical student assignments such as Capstone Projects, Capstone Project interim reports, case studies and theses. It is a reasonable supposition that students who receive instruction from teachers who have mastered academic writing are the ultimate beneficiaries of this scholarliness.