A group photo of PolyU-CALLS 2024 participants.
The conference allows students to present their research to an audience of peers, instructors, and scholars.
Head of ENGL, Prof. Eric Friginal, appreciates the support of the Department’s undergraduate student volunteers to the conference.
PolyU-CALLS 2024 Award winners receive their awards at a hybrid presentation ceremony organised by ENGL on 24 May. From left: Aiden Y. H. Cheung, Gu Beiwei, Wang Ziyue, Jung Haechan (on screen), and Wang Yanning.
Organised by the Department of English and Communication (ENGL), the second annual PolyU Undergraduate Conference on Applied Linguistics and Language Studies (PolyU-CALLS) was held on Saturday, 23 March 2024. The event, held on campus at PolyU, was an even greater success than the previous year, with 150 students participating in the conference. In addition to the student participants from Hong Kong and mainland China, this year PolyU-CALLS became a truly international conference and included presenters from Thailand and South Korea. In total, over 20 different universities from around the world were represented at the conference.
PolyU-CALLS 2024 featured multiple parallel sessions with research presentations by undergraduate students as well as plenary speeches by ENGL alumna Doris Shuk Yi Leung as well as incoming ENGL faculty member Dr Lydia Catedral. In keeping with the conference’s focus on showcasing the work of ENGL undergraduate students, the conference was supported throughout the day by more than a dozen undergraduate student volunteers.
“PolyU-CALLS reflects an important trend in undergraduate education: the increasing emphasis on developing research skills and the ability to critically analyse data. As students progress through their studies, particularly in their Capstone or Final Year Projects, it is crucial that they receive robust training and opportunities to engage in substantive research. PolyU-CALLS again demonstrates a recognition that nurturing these research capacities should be a core part of the undergraduate experience. By providing a platform for students to present and discuss their original research, such events foster a culture of inquiry and empower students to make meaningful contributions to their fields of study” said Professor Eric Friginal, Head of ENGL at PolyU.
The breadth of topics and diversity of presenters at PolyU-CALLS 2024 brought in an audience that included faculty, postgraduate students, and undergraduate students. Attendees at the conference were able to listen to 49 different undergraduate presentations spanning subject areas ranging from hip-hop music lyrics to sign language interpretation in Hong Kong courtrooms. This year, due to overwhelming interest from both within and beyond the Greater Bay Area, organisers were forced to turn away many excellent abstracts. Student presenters were competitively selected based on their submitted proposals, and the overall quality of research presented at the conference was very impressive.
The organisers of PolyU-CALLS 2024 were thrilled with the level of engagement and energy at the event. A post-conference survey was sent to all participants to help the Department know what can be done to make next year’s iteration of the conference even better. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with respondents expressing their enthusiasm for the event, which featured catered lunches and gift bags for all attendees. The majority of respondents said they would recommend PolyU-CALLS to friends and classmates, with one attendee saying the conference “provided an awesome first-time experience” and another stating “it was a nice experience for me as an undergraduate to give a presentation to share my ideas.”
While all the student presenters at PolyU-CALLS 2024 did an amazing job, ENGL would like to acknowledge the work of several outstanding student presenters. The PolyU-CALLS 2024 Award winners for best presentations are:
- Best PolyU-CALLS Presentation Award: Wang Yanning and Wang Ziyue, from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
- Best ENGL Presentation Award: Gu Beiwei, from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
- Best Non-ENGL Presentation Award: Aiden Y. H. Cheung, from The Chinese University of Hong Kong
- Best International Presentation Award: Jung Haechan, from Kyung Hee University
The level of student participation at PolyU-CALLS 2024 highlights an appetite for more student-oriented conferences in Applied Linguistics and Language Studies. “The quality of the student presentations at PolyU-CALLS 2024 was absolutely outstanding,” said Dr Max Diaz, ENGL Undergraduate Programme Leader. “I look forward to next year’s conference, which we hope will be even bigger, more international, and allow us to extend the conference to include a day for MA students to also present their work.” With its first chapter coming to a successful close, students and the Department of English and Communication are already looking forward to PolyU-CALLS 2025.
