Prof. Louise Cummings on Her New Book ‘Language in Dementia’ – PolyU Excel x Impact

Our Associate Dean and Professor of the Department of English, Prof. Louise Cummings, talks about her new book Language in Dementia in the latest issue of Excel x Impact, the University’s magazine. The new book looks into dementia’s impact on language and communication. Different neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson’s disease and progressive supranuclear palsy were analysed in this study. To read more: https://www.polyu.edu.hk/publications/excelximpact/issue/202107/research-innovation/identifying-warning-signs-of-dementia

Hong Kong Linguistics Olympiad Team Shines at IOL 2021

All members of our Hong Kong Linguistics Olympiad (HKLO) team won medals — one Gold, two Silver and a Bronze medals — at the 18th International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) held between 19-23 July 2021: Xie Lingrui (La Salle College) Ip Tsz Oi (Diocesan Girls' School) & Ian Tam (La Salle College) Ng Truman Toby (St. Paul's College) The HKLO team has also achieved the highest average team score for the individual competition. The team is jointly trained by the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies and the Department of English. Please visit the HKLO page for more information about the team.

Dr Peng Gang Awarded RGC Research Fellowship 2021/22

Dr Peng Gang from the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies has been awarded the RGC Research Fellowship (RFS) 2021/22. The RGC received 30 nominations this year and 10 nominees have been selected for RFS awards. The RFS aims to facilitate exceptionally outstanding researchers' full dedication to research and development through providing sustained support and relief from teaching and administrative duties.

FH Paper among Most Cited Papers in Top-Ranked Journal in Linguistics

According to the just released Journal Citation Report 2021, the following paper authored by CBS colleagues ranks among top 3 most cited papers in the journal Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory (CLLT) during this reporting period. CLLT, with JIF of 2.346 and JCI of 1.84, is the top-ranked corpus linguistics journal and one of the top journals in linguistics. Hou, Renkui, Chu-Ren Huang, and Hongchao Liu. "A study on Chinese register characteristics based on regression analysis and text clustering." Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 15, no. 1 (2019): 1-37. *Dr Hou, currently an associate professor at Guangzhou University, was a Postdoctoral Fellow at PolyU. Dr Liu, currently a PDF at Shandong University, obtained his PhD from PolyU in 2018. **JCI (Journal Citation Indicator) is “the average Category Normalised Citation Impact (CNCI) of citable items (articles & reviews) published by a journal over a recent three year period.” The average JCI of any category is 1. Hence, JCI of 1.84 (of CLLT) means that its citation is 84% higher than the average of journals in this category.

FH Achieved Excellent Results in RGC Funding Schemes

The Faculty achieved excellent results in the recent announcement by the Research Grants Council on its General Research Fund (GRF) and Early Career Scheme (ECS). FH secured a total of over HK$9.6 million for 15 GRF projects (6 for CBS, 5 for ENGL, and 4 for CC) and 2 ECS (both for CC) projects in this round of exercise.

Teaching Team of CBS1B03 Receives 2021 Eurasia Foundation (from Asia) Grant

The teaching team of CBS1B03 East Asia: Towards a Global Community with Cultural Diversity (Dr Sun-A Kim [Principal Investigator], Ms Sin Ae Sim, and Dr Reijiro Aoyama) has recently received a grant of USD12,500 from Eurasia Foundation (from Asia). The teaching team has received the grant ninth times since 2012, totalling around HKD1.5 million.

Dr Zhang Caicai Selected as a Young Scientist to Join the 4th World Laureates Forum

Dr Zhang Caicai, Associate Professor of CBS, has been selected as a Young Scientist to participate in the 4th World Laureates Forum (WLF) to be held on 29 October – 1 November 2021. The WLF is an annual gathering of leading scientists from around the world. It aims to provide an exchange and communication platform to support and encourage young scientists worldwide.

Project on Building Robots for Musical Training of ASD Children Funded by SCOLAR

Our Faculty member Dr Chen Si’s project “Developing a Social Robot for Cantonese and Mandarin Speech Prosody Training in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder” received a funding of over one million Hong Kong dollars from the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR). The proposed project and its deliverables may significantly improve ASD children’s speech, communication and learning skills. The project will be the first to examine both Cantonese and Mandarin speech prosody production by trilingual children with and without ASD at Hong Kong. In addition, it aims to use sung speech training to improve speech prosody production of ASD children, which will be beneficial for education development and clinical applications. The sung speech training methods target at the prosody deficit of ASD children and aim to improve their mapping between acoustic cues and information structure. Since communicating with robots is considered less frustrating for ASD children, the proposed project aims to build a social robot with designed interaction tasks based on our sung speech training program. In the future, the social robot can be further modified and developed to support various needs of ASD children in learning languages and communication skills.

Two FH MOOC Projects Awarded Funding from the University

The following MOOC projects from FH have recently been awarded funding by the University: Critically Human: Asian and Western Approaches to Big Questions (Project Leader: Dr Mark Meulenbeld, Associate Dean of FH) This project is a cross-Faculty inter-departmental MOOC which aims to make a critical contribution to an increasingly complex world by asking (and answering) this basic question: What are the critical issues in a human life? This question, aside from its inherent value, should be relevant for learners beyond Humanities, especially those who are shaping the world through STEM disciplines. MOOC course for Cantonese learning--Cantonese for Beginners (Project Leader: Dr Ken Cheng and Dr David Yuen from CLC) This project is proposed by our Chinese Language Centre with an aim to help learners understand the basic phonological structure of Cantonese (using the Jyutping system) and engage in simple conversation in Cantonese. Stay tuned for further updates on these MOOCs!

FH Attained Favourable Results in Research Assessment Exercise 2020

The University Grants Committee (UGC) announced on 24 May the results of Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2020. The Unit of Assessment (UoA) Linguistics and Language Studies at PolyU received the combined percentage of 66% for 4-star (“world-leading”) or 3-star (“internationally excellent”) ratings. It is noteworthy that 100% of our Environment in the RAE UoA Linguistics and Language Studies achieved “world-leading” standard. In addition, 62% of our research in History was ranked as “internationally excellent”. The UGC took constant effort in assessing the research performance of the UGC-funded universities through the RAE 2020. The period covered in this assessment was from October 2013 to September 2019. Over 4,200 eligible academic staff from the eight institutions submitted about 16,000 research outputs, 340 research impact case studies and 190 research environment submissions.