A Message from Dr Bruce Morrison, Former Director of ELC

I feel a little like I imagine some of our students feel: given my homework, I sit for hours dreaming about various, increasingly unconvincing ways to complete the task – A message from Bruce. The brief is suitably vague, rubrics and word limit non-existent, and the evaluation criteria and standards opaque at best. I find that, despite having been reminded repeatedly by one of my close colleagues over the years that it’s about “audience awareness” and “impact”, I am unsure how these factors might relate to the task at hand. Oh well, here goes…

Having lived a peripatetic life since leaving London after university, travelling and working in the Middle East, Europe and Asia, finding myself in Hong Kong for the past 27 years has surprised nobody more than me. Living in China, South Korea and Malaysia, this “barren rock” was a great place to party but certainly not one I would imagine considering as home. However, political events and affairs of the heart brought me here from Beijing, and to The Hong Kong Polytechnic, in the August of 1994.

So much has passed, it’s difficult to know where to shine the spot… When I began working here, and for many years subsequently, the then Faculty of Communication was led by Deans from the Faculty of Engineering; I will pass no comment on this practice save to say that from one I learnt much about university politicking and from another the importance of doing stretching exercises each morning as your body begins to bemoan your earlier excesses. Setting up the Centre for Independent Language Learning with Andy Morrall (and other colleagues departed) in 1996 and the subsequent establishment of the English Language Centre in 1998 were clearly watershed moments, marking perhaps the first period when the crucial importance of developing our students’ communication skills began to become recognised, if sometimes reluctantly.

It was my very great privilege and pleasure to have played my part with my colleagues in making the ELC what it is today – a leading language centre in Asia, a home for a team of talented and dedicated educators and scholars, and great place to work. It has not been all roses, particularly in last few years, and I was asked by a colleague what helped me in the tougher times. I am not a religious person, I don’t have a rigid philosophy of life but I get drawn back to some simple wisdom from perhaps slightly less fractured times. This might perhaps be best captured in a few lines from a song written by the songwriter for the hugely influential American band from the last decades of the last century, the Grateful Dead.

I would like to end with these words, and by thanking all of you for your support and friendship over the years.


Take care of your people, get some of them fed
Hide the ones in trouble out under your bed
Keep an eye to the future, an ear to the past
After thinking it over, notice nothing much lasts
Robert Hunter (1978). One thing to try.

May not be to everyone’s taste musically, but a wad of wisdom in here; has served me well over the years.
https://youtu.be/a_1f9JYGIuo