Students are required to complete a minimum of 60 working hours. Each WIE job must involve at least 60 hours. If the hours are below 60, the job cannot be counted as WIE. Students CANNOT combine one internship with another to fulfill the 60-hour WIE requirement.

To pass your WIE (ENGL2007), you need to do the following assignments:

• Pre-Placement Training (organized by CPS)
• Daily Journal
• Interim Reflections
• Final Report
• Appraisal Form

Please go to the Blackboard site for ENGL2007 for details.

WIE placement can be completed at any time during the second and third year of study, but no later than the Summer Term of Year Three.

Students can work part-time during the academic semester, and their work schedule will depend on their class timetable. Students can also work full-time from mid-May to late August, or during the semester break (late December to mid-January).

Your WIE can be a paid or unpaid job.

Statutory Minimum Wage does not apply to “student interns” and “work experience students during a period of exempt student employment”. Department of English will provide a confirmation to certify BAESP students’ “student intern” status upon request. Each student can be exempted from Statutory Minimum Wage as a “student intern” ONCE ONLY for fulfillment of the minimum WIE requirement (i.e. the first WIE placement). Please click here for more details.

The Department is not in the position to issue any confirmation in supporting non-WIE jobs that are remunerated lower than the statutory minimum wage rate.

Students can participate in one of the following types of placements:

• Overseas/Mainland WIE Programme organized by the Careers and Placement Section, Student Affairs Office (CPS, SAO) Please visit CPS’s website here for programme information. Only placements endorsed by the Department of English can be counted as WIE.

• Individual Placements (Self-acquired Jobs)
  Individual placements refer to self-acquired jobs that will allow students to apply their professional knowledge and/or to meaningfully develop their personal generic skills in the workplace environment.

1. Only study / curriculum-related internships will be endorsed by the Department for the fulfillment of graduation requirements, i.e. satisfying WIE hours.
2. The WIE job should be relevant to the students' academic studies. It should enable students to apply their knowledge and skills acquired from their studies to the real working world and help students develop generic skills relevant to their future professional goals.
3. The WIE job has to involve workplace tasks that are assigned by the employer, with supervision and assessment by more senior colleagues or co-workers. Exchange activities and study tours not involving supervision and assessment by an employer are not normally recognized as WIE. Similarly, jobs such as private tutoring and freelance translation work without supervision are not counted as WIE.
4. Jobs that require mainly manual work (e.g. data entry) or without much need for professional communication skills or academic knowledge (e.g. stock-taking, modelling) are not normally recognized as WIE.
5. The Department accepts voluntary English teaching activities in recognized NGOs as WIE placements provided that the conditions above have been met. However, community service teaching experiences that have been registered as credit-bearing courses at PolyU cannot be double-counted for WIE fulfillment. For details of service-learning subjects offered by the University, please click here .
6. For non-local students: Jobs that violate any of the conditions set out in the “No Objection Letter” (NOL) issued by the Immigration Department will not be approved.

Students should always seek the Department’s approval before taking up any internship. Students should recognize that it is their ultimate responsibility to fulfill WIE as required by the University. If students face difficulties in securing a placement, they should actively seek further assistance from the WIE Coordinator and WIE Officer in advance.

Students who wish to have their self-acquired jobs recognized by the Department as a WIE placement are required to submit their application materials at least 2 weeks before the placement begins.

Failure to obtain approval from the department prior to commencement of placement will result in your work not being counted toward WIE. Work completed prior to approval from the Department will not count towards WIE hours.

For overseas summer placement, students have to submit their application much earlier. The application period is usually during March and June. Details will be announced in February / March.

Students have to email the completed WIE Conversion Form together with a copy of the employment contract and a job description from the job advertisement to the WIE officer.

If the company does not provide the intern with a contract, the intern has to request the employer to issue a letter certifying the job details.

Students of our BA programme DO NOT need to register for the WIE subject during the add / drop period.

Registration for the WIE subject (ENGL2007) and the official announcement of subject result will only be made by the General Office at the end of the following semester after students’ completion of placement.

ENGL2007 Work-Integrated Education contributes to 3 training credits. The WIE assessment is based on a system composed of three grades: Pass with Merits (M), Pass (P), and Failure (F). However, the subject does not contribute toward the GPA.

Offshore WIE Sponsorship (OWS)

Non-final year students can apply for OWS to support their offshore WIE placements overseas or in Mainland China. Different levels of sponsorship will be granted based on the internship destination and duration, and students are expected to cover part of the expenses incurred. There is a deadline for application each year. Please refer to CPS’s website here for more information on eligibility and application procedure.

The main indicators are whether the job is relevant to students' academic profession and whether students could develop generic skills through the placement.

No, you can't. In principle, WIE hours will only be counted after the approval of your submission of the Application for Conversion of Individual Placement. Your working experience before your application submission could not be approved retroactively. Part-time jobs that you have been doing for some time will not normally be counted as WIE.

Registration for the WIE subject (ENGL2007) and the official announcement of subject result will only be made at the end of the following semester after students' timely submission of the Appraisal Form and Final Report. Hence, students who submit their reports and documents after the last teaching day of the semester will not see their WIE results recorded in the transcript in the following semester.

The indicator of WIE fulfillment on your online transcript will only be updated to "fulfilled" by CPS by the time you graduate. If you find the subject ENGL2007 registered with a grade (either M or P) on your online transcript, that means you have completed the WIE requirement.

If you have completed more than one WIE internship, the second placement is treated as a top-up WIE placement and no grade will show up for it.

Students need to complete a minimum of 60 working hours in order to fulfill the WIE requirements.

For part-time internship, interns can start their placement during the academic semester, and their work schedule will depend on their class timetable.

For full-time internships, students can work from mid-May to late August, or during the semester break (late December to mid-January).

Some organizations will conduct interviews to select suitable interns. Upon requests from employers, the Department can also short-list students according to specific requirements, and provide employers with interns’ CVs for further selection and confirmation.

We encourage companies to allow students to engage in meaningful work which are relevant to their discipline of study and that will enable them to develop generic and transferable skills.

Employers are encouraged to expose students to the various functions and operations in their business and, if possible, provide training in specific areas that are vital to their future career.

Jobs that involve data entry, retail sales, and telemarketing, etc. are not recommended as internships. Moreover, engagement in dangerous, manual labour, unethical or illegal activities will not be approved.