Teaching English with Children’s Literature in Hong Kong

A new, free resource was launched in the Fall of 2020 to help English language teachers in Hong Kong introduce children’s literature in their language teaching. It has been developed as part of a project titled “Children’s Literature in English Language Teaching for Primary Students in Hong Kong” with Prof. Kathleen Ahrens from the Department of English at PolyU as Principal Investigator, Dr Jackie Fung King Lee form EdUHK as Co-Investigator, and Dr Marija Todorova as Postdoctoral Fellow. The project is funded by the Language Fund under Research and Development Projects 2018-19 of the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR), Hong Kong SAR.

Recent research has demonstrated the importance of literature in English language teaching and has provided a number of approaches to teaching literature in language classrooms. The increasing number of published English language children’s books that portray the realities of everyday life for children in Hong Kong allow for the use of authentic materials in the English language classroom.

As a result of the project, a list was compiled with more than 50 children’s books for ages 6 to 12 written in English by an author who has worked and lived in Hong Kong for a significant period of time (three or more years) or has a heritage relationship with Hong Kong and that is related to Hong Kong in some way. It is hoped that the list may be useful not only to teachers, but also to everyone interested in increasing their knowledge of Hong Kong related children’s literature.

For ten of these books, the research team has developed a Teacher’s Resources pack with (i) a Unit Lesson Plan with 10 lessons; (ii) ten separate 30-minute lessons for each book; and (iii) a video interview with the author. The activities in the Teacher’s Resources pack are based on a communicative approach to ESL teaching and cover all four language skills: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. English teachers in Hong Kong primary schools can send an email to engl.rcpce@polyu.edu.hk and request a password to unzip the pack and access the video interviews with the authors.

More about the project, including the project outcomes and the children’s book list, is available at the project website:
https://sites.google.com/view/clelt/home.