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3rd HAAL Research Seminar

Today, I attended the Third HAAL Research Seminar. The event was wonderful and inspiring, providing beginning academics and serving teachers with a good platform to share their research and teaching ideas. More important, I had opportunities to talk with colleagues that I seldom see because of our busy teaching schedules, doctorate students who study in other institutions or the same one with mine and experienced academics whom I seldom see in other conferences. This HAAL Research Seminar is just like a party where people in the same fields - applied linguistics and teacher education - can see each other and talk about their research. I saw Andy Gao, Andy Kirkpatrick, Icy, George, Becky, David Carless, Jessica, Maggie, Iris, Darren, Simon, Jon, Lixun, Emily, Pauline, Amy, Victor (my previous colleague in CityU). I also attended some interesting sections and have to highlight the most wonderful closing talk given by Andy, Dave and Becky who presented and discussed the journey of writing for publication. After the event, I spent some quality time with Grace who picked me up after the conference (treat me like a kid) as she attended a NSS professional development course at PolyU as well. Looking forward to the Fourth HAAL Research Seminar!

NSS course

Dear NSSC participants,

This is my third year to teach this EDB-tendered professional development course. I hope you like the ideas I delivered in this morning and trust that they can be utilized in the real classroom context.

The syllabus, despite designed by Tim, is largely based upon the EDB curriculum guide published in 2007. You may find some ideas too idealistic or impractical in your classroom situations. That's why it's significant to remember to fine-tune whatever teaching models or suggestions proposed to you as there is no one-size-fit-all pedagogical model that suits all contexts.

Lastly, the most important thing is that you can get to know one another who also works in the same field, or who is, like you, still struggling in the NSS teaching. However, after hearing what is happening in other schools, you may become more relieved that you know you are not alone. Instead, we are all in the same boat! Perhaps, you may make new friends through this occasion.

Good luck and enjoy.

Ricky

SSLW 2009

Last week, I attended the SSLW 2009 in Tempe, Arizona.


The symposium was well-received and very successful since participants from more than 20 countries joined this function. The 3-day symposium has a very thought-provoking as well as philosophical theme - the future of second language writing, so in other words, this year symposium aims to give writing scholars opportunities to think and plan ahead how the field continues to develop and even pass on to the next generation.


Presentation sessions, plenary sessions and colloquia were all inspiring and enlightening. I am sure the symposium attendees might fly home with tons of good ideas on their research agendas given it consists of so many themes and topics which could stimulate the thoughts of the audience.


To round up, my trip to Arizona State University was quite an eye-opener.

Fighting Against Youth Drug Abuse

It is quite disheartening to realize that youth drug abuse has become an increasingly popular trend in Hong Kong in which teens have used drugs even when they are at school or at their leisure time like having fun on the beach.

Does the social problem reach an alarming level that all stakeholders should turn their ideas on how to combat the problem of drug abuse into actions which should be stepped up to help schools and parents to resolve the predicament? The answer is definitely yes.

Some schools facing the challenges of their own students taking soft drugs such as ketamine are able to view the problem squarely and take action to help those troubled youths as mush as they could. Instead of penalizing students involving drugs, the school principal was trying to give a helping hand to those 'bad' students and took them out of the abyss. While some schools attempt to evade the issue, the other school heads have been very positive to rack their brains to work out ways to help those students who are in deep trouble. A case in point is that a pilot voluntary drug test, suggested by the commission report led by the Secretary of Justice in 2007, will be in place in a cluster of Tai Po secondary schools which sets a very good example for other schools in the territory despite the fact that its effectiveness was questioned and the issues of privacy and human rights in relation to the drug test further exacerbated its implementation.

While the notion of voluntary drug test is sound and it early arrival is doing more good than harm to school administrators and parents, other preventive measures such as parental education and collaboration of police school liaison officer, teacher and social worker should be further strengthened in order to keep an eye on students' whole person development. More resources should be granted to help teens to quit drugs if they were identified positive in the drug test. Extra resources might have been funded to establish drug rehabilitation centres. In the mean time, the issue of youth drug abuse deserves more attention from all walks of life as it is a problem of society. More care and supervision should be provided to those rebellious youths. Home-school relation should also be fostered so that there is better communication among all stakeholders such as parent, teacher, student, social worker and police. Civil education is also a must to curb the problem from getting worse. I reckon the problem of youth drug abuse needs the help of all people and again we should not fish for the answer to this question 'Who is to blame?' The troubled youths need our trust and support which could transform them into a good citizen in future.

A seminar on new perspectives on feedback practice

Last Saturday, I attended a very interesting and thought-provoking seminar which introduced ten new perspectives on teacher's feedback practice. The talk was given by a famous writing scholar who has aspired to revolutionize feedback practice in Hong Kong writing classrooms. The title of the talk features how to free writing teachers from being composition slaves.

The talk was well-received and also included a panel discussion during its second part. Five guest speakers, also in-service teachers in various secondary schools, shared their points of view how to adopt alternative approaches such as peer response and conferencing to give feedback to their students. Their sharing was authentic as well as stimulating. I am sure on that day, the audience may have taken home a lot from both the speaker and guest speakers.

A small accident

It was not the first time.

It was I think the fourth time, but this time it was me who fell prey to an unwanted accident...

What happened to me? I was bitten by my doggy last night. The wound isn't large and serious, but definitely a little scar will appear on my wrist... Not too bad!

Actually, my doggy has bitten Grace for two times. He is always in a bad mood and he has a very bad temper. I - is occupied by somebody. We could only sit on the sofa with his presence. Sometimes, if he saw us sit there without inviting him, he became very upset and angry.

Last night, while I was about to take him down the sofa, he gave me a bite as he thought he should stay there. Actually it was 1 am, I usually escorted him to his cage. Probably he didn't want to sleep. This is him who never wants to sleep at night... a very bad habit like most kids......

I went to the doctor this morning and she said I was fine. Only a small scar. I don't mind. But surely need to discipline this little doggy today.

Student teacher

Lately, I have browsed my students' blogposts about their 'school life' as they have attached to either local primary or secondary schools for practising English teaching over 8 weeks' time.

No doubt, some students shared their joys and some tears and most important of all, the majority of them talked about their students and mentors. In general, most students are happy about the schools they work in and do enjoy teaching young kids. I also realize that they become more and more ready to become a good teacher as they have learnt a lot through their mentors and supervisors.

Occasionally, some students would share their excellent performance in teaching practice with other coursemates but some may be disappointed with the grades they received. To me, no matter what summative grade they obtained is not an issue; what matters most is their attitude and commitment. I think as long as they did their best to prepare the lessons and teach the students, they should regard themselves as good student teachers. I am not saying that grades are not significant. Of course, without the summative grades, who will motivate to teach to the best in the practicum?

Time and again, I have met a lot of energetic and enthusiastic in-service teachers who really teach with heart. So what grades should these teachers deserve? In my opinion, they all deserve a Distinction. I also truly appreciate some teachers, without any incentives and rewards such as promotion or bonus, are still conscientious to work day and night for the well-being of their students. These teachers are the heroes/heroines in this field.

Conferencing

Having finished teaching ENG 2213 and ENG 3280, I started to give consultations to individual students or a group of students by appointment.

In these two weeks, I met a lot of them who either prepared questions about their drafted assignments or intended to clear any misunderstandings of some key concepts in the modules. That's a good sign. Up to this point, most students asked me how they could design an effective formative assessment task to be carried out in the ESL classroom (which is part of the assessment requirements of the module ENG 3280 and some actually required me to define the formative assessment task conceptually before they planned their assessment strategies for use.

'Formative assessment is not like its summative counterpart in terms of form and mode of delivery. Students, however, do not need to pick up a pen and fill out correct answers on a quiz paper under timed conditions when performing formative assessment. Instead, it takes place minute by minute and hour by hour and is part of teaching and learning process. For instance, the conference between you and me is a kind of formative assessment since I give you verbal feedback which may result in improvement being made in the next step of your learning.' I replied.

Some of my students fully understood this analogy but some still interpreted formative assessment from the perspectives of psychometric assessment paradigm, that is, formative assessment is a tool to judge students rather than to help them improve.

To round up our meetings, I usually said, 'Keep up with your reading and call me if you have further questions about your assignment.'

Carol

Last night, I invited Carol, one of my previous BEd students to give a talk to my ENG 3172 students in my lecture. Carol has just started her career as a primary school teacher since 2008 and is working in a Band 1 school located in Diamond Hill. What she shared with students was how she used portfolio-based approach to support P1 students' learning of writing. Though she only talked about the assessment practice for about 40 minutes, students were very attentive and studied the students' sample work carefully. Towards the end of the talk, students raised some questions concerning the implementation of the portfolio approach in junior primary classroom.

Based upon students' responses, this kind of talk is welcome and actually Carol is in a position to share her experience with the pre-service teachers as she is the real consumer of this alternative assessment approach. Her presence could really bridge the gap between theory and practice. After the talk, I treated Carol for dinner. She really deserved it! We shared a lot of interesting anecdotes when she was still a student in the Institute and she told me about her work and students. What's an interesting evening!

'Effective Feedback'

What is 'effective feedback'?

Should effective feedback be a grade, a mark or a phrase like 'Good', 'Excellent' or 'Well done'?

All of the above is FEEDBACK, but may not be effective one...

Yesterday, I received student evaluation from two groups of students. One is from in-service NSS course and one from BEd students. I was elated as both groups of students gave me very positive feedback which could motivate me to do better and encourage me to continue my good practices. However, I realize that the in-service group gave me some very weird comments such as:

"In this short course, there should be no assignments."

"The course should not be held on Saturdays."

"I think this tutor is young and inexperienced to teach us." (My immediate response is I am not very young.)

What do you think? The above is all feedback but not feedback about how to improve teaching and learning. The feedback given by the teacher participants can't inform me how to improve my teaching nor how to facilitate better learning in this professional development course. Instead, they are purely 'personal' grievances towards the course. And also I would say the last comment is a little bit offensive though I took it as a compliment!! I think being a professional teacher, we should learn how to give effective feedback which can help improve our teaching as well as enhance effective learning.

Pass or Excellent

Yesterday, I met my supervisor, Dave and asked him a lot of advice about the strategies on how to write up the last two chapters which are rather challenging and significant. Dave asked me, "When you submit your thesis, we will rank you based upon 5 grades, Excellent, Very good, Good, Pass and Fail."

I then replied, "I just want to get a Pass as the task of writing a doctoral thesis is so difficult to accomplish.'

He added, " You can't just get a Pass because if the external examiner is tough, you may obtain a Fail."

Having heard about this comment, I felt even more scared than before and didn't know how I should proceed and improve my work.

Luckily, Dave is a very supportive and understanding supervisor who did not really give me too much pressure. Up to now, he didn't say too much about when I should submit the first draft. He simply said, "Try very best to make your thesis consistent and produce a good first draft once you are ready. And jot down every single idea which is useful for your thesis."

Then we went on with our lunch. I felt a bit relieved this time but still worried about my study progress as I was too occupied with the teaching duties and other committments in my working place.

I remind myself, "Be strong and believe I can do it."

A NSS Workshop

Lately, one Kwun Tong secondary school has invited me to run a workshop on one of the electives in NSS curriculum - Social Issues. Actually I am very glad to share my humble experience with frontline teachers and panel chairs in the territories. Personally, I am more keen on exploring non-language arts electives rather than language arts counterparts since I think the former is more practical and useful for the less able students. In the professional development courses that I am teaching, I usually introduce 'Pop Culture ', 'Workplace English Communication', 'Sports Communication' and 'Social Issues' to teacher participants. However, this time, my audience is only limited to a panel of 17 teachers, so I need to tailor-make the contents of the workshop and should have a better communication with the panel chair to see what I am expected to deliver. Up to now, I have corresponded to the panel chair twice and understood what teachers wanted to learn in this workshop. I am looking forward to collaborating with the colleagues in this secondary school.

A University Title

Yesterday, the UGC announced that the HKIEd's application for a university title was rejected and the Review Group Report in the meantime was also released. In the document, two proposed ideas were recommended to the Institute. First, the notion of 'merger' is an alternative like NIE in Singapore and IOE in Britain. Second, the Institute should develop and become a multidisciplinary institution which attends to the wider needs of society such as offering various undergraduate and postgraduate programs other than education.

Through the intranet, the President sent us an e email that the option one was non-issue. Actually he would attempt to focus all his efforts and put all available resources to turn the Institute into a university more than teacher-training organization. I think his determination to fight for the university title is evident and unambiguous. No matter what statue we were given, academic, teaching and administrative staffs are all working hand in hand to excel ourselves. Perhaps, the most unhappy ones would be students. It is understandable they were disappointed because they also worked hard to fight for the title. And most colleagues actually told students to work hard and behave well if they want to 'own' this university title. Who knows? Maybe after three years or another three years... We may become a unique "university", specializing at both education and social science disciplines.

"I enjoyed Saturday class"

Yesterday, I taught the other round of NSS professional development course (PDC). Since 2007, I have been teaching this course for more than 12 cohorts, each of which consists of 4 sessions of 3 hours.

From my observation, participants who opted for Saturday class usually performed better in class and showed more willingness to learn the current curriculum and assessment trends. There are two major reasons to account for this phenomenon. In the first place, teachers feel more relaxed since there is no need to do substitution after they go back to school. Can't believe it. Second, it is obvious that they feel more refreshed on Saturdays.

I asked one of the participants, "Why did you choose Saturday instead of weekdays to attend this course?"

She then replied: "My principal doesn't allow me to take any courses during school days (from Monday to Friday), so I can only attend PDC or seminars on Saturdays."

Another participant also told me that she enjoyed attending courses on Saturdays because she didn't need to think about teaching . "I enjoy Saturday classes. I can better concentrate on Saturdays since teaching and marking occupy most of my time on weekdays."

Though these 28 participants may not represent all teachers in Hong Kong, I reckon most of them are eager and even fond of upgrading their professional knowledge. Actually some of them do not mind spending their personal time to take courses given that Saturday is not counted as a working day (but I am sure most principals may think oppositely)...

All in all, most teachers are conscientious and committed to their work and it is only the system that fails to support them and make them more professional than ever.

Spoken Language and Written Language

This afternoon, it's my colleague's turn to give a lecture on the differences between the features of spoken and written language. By all means, spoken form and written form of language are very different in terms of mode of delivery and uses in various contexts of communication. However, scholarly research on writing has long been developed; whereas spoken discourse has just been explored since the last four decades of the 20th century.

Sure, my colleague, An, is always good at giving lively and stimulating lectures on discourse analysis as it is one of her research and teaching areas. She quoted a very good example to illustrate why spoken and written discourse are so different by using an example of her students who used to ask her a very interesting question:

'Dr. He, in the tutorial, you had a very high opinion of my oral presentation, but why you found out so many problems in my draft version when I sent it to you for comments.'

Then, An explained to all students in the lecture theatre: 'Yes, it's always easy to present a paper or a drafted version of an assignment verbally since there is so much visual and audio support to help convey the message, so to speak, resulting in better and more productive delivery of the presentation. However, when it comes down to written discourse, the draft is "alone", without any contextual clues or paralinguistic features to make its meaning explicit and clear to its readers! That's why writing is far more cognitively demanding than speaking in terms of transmission of information.'

I particularly like this example as writing is much more demanding than speaking. Writers have to make sure every word and every idea he/she put down on paper is relevant and sensible to readers who only read the text instead of seeing or meeting the writers face-to-face. Every single idea must be understandable and interpretable to others who are far and remote from the writers in time and space. An then concluded by saying 'Speaking is a process which is constantly happening and writing is a product which existed physically.'

Never Give Up

This afternoon, I saw a movie called 'Marley and Me' and actually the film is based upon the novel version which was published in 2005 and I read the book during last summer. There is almost pointless to compare the book and movie versions as the former usually outperformed the latter. For the movie version, a number of episodes has to be twisted and everything single detail that happens in the book may be squeezed to very different form in order to make the pace of the movie much faster and appealing to audience.

Back to the story, the film is about a couple, both journalists, who were newly wed and attempted to raise a dog before considering taking greater responsibility to raise their own kids. Having visited a farm, the coupled decided to purchase 'a bargain dog' which is a breed of Labrador Retriever. It was the beginning of the couple's nightmares. When Marley was home, he could ruin everything one could imagine, chewing sofa, scratching the floor, breaking the window and eating the whole remote control! He was extremely devastated to the thunderstorm and reacted extraordinarily abnormal. This little devil no doubt gave a lot of troubles to the couple.

Finally, the couple had 3 kids. While raising Marley and 3 kids, the couple felt very frustrated and tired. Once, they were determined to give up and did not want to keep Marley anymore. Having a second thought, the couple thought it wouldn't be a complete family without Marley despite his naughtiness and misbehavior as he witnessed the growth of the family. At last, they stayed with him until he passed away. The story is obviously a sad one. However, the underlying message is pretty clear that in our life, things are always difficult and sometimes insurmountable. If we insist on overcoming them, we will succeed eventually!

A long day

At 9 this morning, I arrived at the office and prepared my lesson, simply studying what I have written on the PowerPoint. At 10, a student came and asked me something about her assignment. At 10:20, I went straight to the classroom. The lesson went on until 1:30. Having finished the third session of Language Assessment, a few Yr. 4 students asked me some questions about their final year thesis.

By the time I went to the office, it was 1:50, I then had a quick lunch. Nothing good was on the menu, mainly leftovers. I decided to have some noodles. At 2 pm, I browsed Blackboard to see whether my students posted their comments on the Forum as I usually uploaded some questions and invited discussion every week. More and more students have participated in this activity. After responding to a few entries, I went straight to a meeting about the NSS professional development course. This is a quality assurance meeting for all colleagues who teach the course. We mainly reported our feedback and shared some teaching ideas. The meeting lasted for 1 and 1/2 hours.

Around 4, I thought I could start marking the assignments. However, one of my colleagues called me and he wanted to talk to me about some issues on staff appraisal. Then we had a chat for about 45 mins. It seemed to me that he was not happy working in IEd. A lot of complaints!! Finish my work as a councillor. I went back to my work and started marking the last three assignments. At 8:45, I finally finished and entered the marks in an Excel file. I left Tai Po.

About 9:30, I was home but felt speechless as the day was REALLY long. No sooner did I finish my dinner, then I forgot my doctor appointment at 8pm. I immediately called Dr Law to apologize for my absence and I asked if I could make another appointment the following day. She said, 'Why not?' Now, I should get some sleep. Good night.

Back pain

During the last two weeks, I worked non-stop for preparing lessons and marking assignments . Yesterday, my back pain and stiff neck came back and I realized perhaps I kept sitting in front of the computer for too long. My family doctor told me to move around or stretch my arms and legs every twenty minutes. It is a very good suggestion but how I can remember to do so unless a timer is put in front of me. To relieve pain and ache in my shoulders and back, I took pain-killers three times a day and applied Salonsip gel patches to the affected areas. It's so painful!! I even found it hard to stand straight this morning. I pray to get well soon as I need to give my second lecture on Monday. Keep my fingers crossed....

In Celebration of Rosina's life

This afternoon, I attended a gathering organized by Steve Andrews in celebrating Rosina's life. The event was held in form of buffet lunch and invitations were sent to all past students of Rosina including BEd and PGDE students since 1998. I saw a lot of old friends there such as Blanche, Michael, Simon Chan, Simon Sharp, Maria and some teachers who taught me before including Margaret, David Bunton, Leo, Suzie, Amy and so forth.

The purpose of this occasion is to bring back good memories of Rosina and the function started off with cocktail and then slide show which featured the life of Rosina. The pictures since Rosina was four were shown. After the slide show, seven guests gave their speeches to share with the guests the sense of humor Rosina had as well as how much she loved cooking. Then, several past students of hers talked about some interesting anecdotes happened when they were studying Yr. 3 and Yr. 4 with Rosina. While Gary was giving a speech, some of us were in tears because Gary knew Rosina very well and what he mentioned was really touched such as the jokes of shipping Amazon cookery books for Rosina from the UK and all faculty gossips. Lastly, when Amy concludes Rosina's life, I was impressed with one sentence she spoke, 'She did not die.' I guess it is right to say so. I always think of her especially those words in which she taught me how to be a good teacher educator. I will remember these words forever.

Although the event was a bit sad towards the end, all guests knew that if we were upset, Rosina was not happy because she liked partying. In order to celebrate the life of Rosina, we should be cheerful after we parted company and remember how she fought the batter with a larger-than-life attitude.

A New Semester

The first week of Semester 2 has started already. So far, I have met two groups of students I teach. They are BEd Yr. 3 and BA Yr. 4 years. For the former students, I teach their tutorials plus two lectures and for the latter group, I teach them all sessions. Students in these two groups are quite different in terms of their learning styles, personalities and career aspiration. That's interesting. Well, we had a good start this week. Hope they enjoy the modules like me.

Cafe de Verseau

Joyce, my sister-in-law started a coffee shop named Cafe de Verseau two years ago. The cafe is located in a shopping mall in Mongkok. This evening, we paid a visit to this very trendy cafe. In the meantime, we celebrated Grace's birthday though hers is on 20th.

Joyce recommended one award-winning dish to us and it is actually a chicken roll with instant noodle. She told me that the chef was very creative to design this mouth-watering appetizer out of some ordinary ingredients. This appetizer is indeed crispy and delicious. We also ordered some drinks and had great fun there.