Improving Second Language Writing: Across the Disciplines Resources for Content Teachers

Our Dr Renia Lopez found that writing instruction following a teaching and learning cycle, or any other type of cycle, where feedback and a chance to integrate it is given to students, did help them improve their academic writing. She noticed that more interactive co-deconstruction approach is more effective, and that pushing students to think about the writing instruction contents through simple exercises also enhances their awareness and confidence levels. The research and its findings were reported in her contributed chapter "Improving Second Language Writing Across the Disciplines: Resources for Content Teachers" in the new book Teaching Language and Content in Multicultural and Multilingual Classrooms: CLIL and EMI Approaches (pp. 191-122), published by Palgrave Macmillan and also available at Springer. About the book: click here About Dr Renia Lopez: click here

Win a Cash Prize: Logo Design Competition for New ENGL Logo (deadline: 26 March 2021)

We are proud to announce the retitling of the Department to the Department of English and Communication with effect from 1 September 2021. The abbreviation of the Department will remain "ENGL". This retitling marks a new milestone for the Department, and we invite all PolyU staff, students, and alumni of ENGL to participate in a competition to design a new logo for the Department! The competition runs until 26 March 2021. The winner will be contacted by email on 30 April 2021. The selected winner will receive a cash prize of HK$1,000. We are looking for creative ideas that capture the values and mission of our Department and that emphasise its commitment to excellent education and research on language and communication in applied contexts like education, business, and healthcare, where English remains the international language of choice. The new title also recognizes that the academics in the Department are interdisciplinary and represent diverse research areas and methodologies. Click here to submit your best design NOW!

Replay: Introducing MSDIP: A Method for coding source domains in metaphor analysis by Dr Gudrun Reijnierse

This is a replay of the webinar took place on 8 February 2021 with Dr Gudrun Reijnierse as the speaker. She introduced a source-domain coding method in metaphor analysis, with examples from Corpora of Historical American English and Contemporary American English. Abstract: Conceptual metaphor analysis is an important part of many metaphor studies (e.g., Ahrens & Jiang, 2020; Dodge, Jisup, & Sitckles, 2015; Steen, 1999, 2011), because conceptual metaphors are considered to provide a window onto human thinking (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Over the years, however, the analytical process of attributing source-domain to linguistic metaphors has received relatively limited attention (Deignan, 2016). In this talk, we introduce a systematic, reliable method for source-domain coding in metaphor analysis. This method is based on the assumption that metaphorical words can have multiple potential source domains that need to be identified. The method is illustrated through various examples from the Corpus of Historical American English and the Corpus of Contemporary American English. We also report the results of a series of reliability tests to show that the method constitutes a reliable tool for source-domain identification. Finally, we illustrate situations in which the linguistic context or aspects related to genre or time of publication may restrict the range of potential source domains. In such cases, linguistic and/or contextual information thus serve to further specify the source domain. This online seminar was jointly organised by the Department of English and Research Centre for Professional Communication in English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.  

Latest issue of newsletter published: ENGLink Autumn 2020

Headline:  HK$1.19M Granted for Research Projects

What can our English-major graduates do? Watch the latest video produced by the Global Engagement Office!

Our two BA alumni, Vivian Leung and Justin Yuen, shared in the video how the knowledge and training they received helped them develop a promising career upon graduation.

Neologisms are epidemic: Modeling the life cycle of neologisms in China 2008-2016

Have you ever heard about these Chinese neologisms: 蝸居 wo1ju1 “living within a snail’s shell”, 雷 lei2 “thunder, describing a person getting shocked by something absurd”, and 裸婚 luo3 “marriage without traditional ceremonies”? The new joint paper by our Professor Kathleen Ahrens revealed that the majority of influential Chinese neologisms possess a similar rapidly rising-decaying pattern, based on Google Trends data. Click here for further information.

Replay: From Language to Languaging: Bringing chant and gesture into the picture by Dr Fred Cummins

How is language used to inquire into a profound change in pre-history, birthing modern humans and their activities? This is a replay of the webinar took place on 3 February 2021. In this joint webinar with the International Society for Gesture Studies - Hong Kong, Dr Fred Cummins introduced the term languaging to highlight a range of coordinative and affiliative activities that produced the change we recognise in retrospect and more. Dr Fred Cummins is a cognitive scientist and linguist (PhD Indiana U., 1997) with longstanding interest in developing accounts of human cognition and being that are rooted in the body, rather than just the brain. His work on joint speech (chant) over the last 20 years has generated a novel field of relevance to disciplines from neuroscience to religious studies. His work combines ethnological observation with philosophically motivated use of concepts from the theory of enaction and the formal tools of dynamical systems theory. Abstract: The term “language” is used to motivate inquiry into two very different and important questions. The first is the inquiry into coded message exchange. This underlies almost all of the work within traditional linguistics. The second is to inquire into a profound change that occurred in pre-history, birthing modern humans and their activities. I will argue that the conventional understanding of “language” cannot address this second question and I will introduce the term “languaging” instead, to highlight a range (scope unknown) of coordinative and affiliative activities that produced the change we recognise in retrospect. Working from the empirical observation of chanting (joint speech) and its role in embodied ritual and performative practices, I will illustrate one form of languaging that has hitherto been neglected. This novel focus yokes gesture, speech, and many other aspects of collective embodied activity together and adds to the increasingly motivated drive to develop profoundly embodied theories of our being that avoid the shortcomings of accounts based in the computational metaphor and a reductive neurocentrism. This online seminar was jointly organised by the Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and International Society for Gesture Studies - Hong Kong.

Media Coverage: Why do we study English and Applied Linguistics? (Sky Post)

Language – particularly the English language in today’s world – is key to understand the motivations, beliefs, and behaviors of peoples and cultures around the world.

READ@PolyU Workshop: Strategies for Expanding Your English Vocablary (3 Mar 2021)

Our Dr Phoebe Lin is invited by Pao Yue-kong Library to give an online talk about expanding English Vocabulary. She will share some research-based facts, figures, and tips about vocabulary learning, as well as Library and online resources, so that we can be smarter at managing our own vocabulary-building activities. It is open to all PolyU staff and students.  About the talk: click here About Dr Phoebe Lin: click here

Online Place Branding: The Case of Hong Kong

Congrats to our Dr Phoenix Lam for her first book! This book examines the online place branding of Hong Kong, one of the most visited cities and well-known spots in the world through an interdisciplinary approach combining the concepts, methods and tools in language and discourse studies and insights from marketing and tourism research. The book compares how the place brand is officially constructed and conveyed by the institutional bodies, as realised on the Brand Hong Kong website online, with how the place brand is publicly experienced and perceived by individuals worldwide, as realised on the TripAdvisor Hong Kong travel forum online. The book also includes a comparative analysis between Singapore and Hong Kong to better understand online place branding and findings from the comparative study. Suggestions are given on how to bridge the gap between the online representation and perception of a place brand and enhance online place branding in general. More details: click here About Dr Phoenix Lam: click here