1. Brief overview of Hong Kong pre-tertiary and postgraduate education 2. Concerns and expectations on academic literacy from pre-tertiary and postgraduate students 3. Lexicogrammatical analysis of effective student texts using Appraisal framework 4. Current support for PolyU students 5. Future research and ambitions

1. CROSSING THE
BRIDGES:
ESL students’ perspectives on
academic english learning in the pre-
and post-undergraduate context
Eric Cheung (eric.cheung@polyu.edu.hk), Research
Associate
Department of English, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
ISFC40 Sun Yat-sen University:
Colloquium

2. Outline
 Brief overview of Hong Kong pre-tertiary and
postgraduate education
 Concerns and expectations on academic
literacy from pre-tertiary and postgraduate
students
 Lexicogrammatical analysis of effective student
texts using Appraisal framework
 Current support for PolyU students
 Future research and ambitions

3. UGC Policy (2007)
 Education hub of the region
 Whole higher education as one force
 Provision of excellent teaching in all areas
relevant to its role
 Promotion of “international
competitiveness”

4. Hong Kong Pre-tertiary
Education
 More choices for senior secondary school
graduates
 Annual Policy Address 2000:
 By 2010, 60% of the senior secondary school
leavers will receive tertiary education
 Associate Degree
 Referring to Community College in the US
 2- or 3-year programmes
 Higher Diploma
 Professional Diploma

5. Hong Kong Pre-tertiary
Education
S6 School Leavers
Degree (Year 1)
Employment/Continuous
Education
Degree programmes (Year 2)
Degree programmes (Year 3)
Yijin
Diploma
Programme
HD (3)
HD (2)
HD (1)
Pre-
Associate
Diploma
AD (2)
AD (1)
Degree programmes (Year 4)

6. Postgraduate Studies in Hong
Kong
 Types of postgraduate studies
 Taught Postgraduate Programmes
 Research Postgraduate Programmes
 RGC launched Hong Kong PhD Fellowship
Scheme in 2009 to attract students around the
world to pursue PhD studies and research in
UGC-funded institutions in Hong Kong
 210 candidates were offered a fellowship in
2013/14 academic year (28 from PolyU)

7. Enrolment 2009-13 (UGC,
2013)
2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13
Sub-degree 7009 6983 6927 7041
Undergraduate 56610 57565 58412 76353
Taught postgraduate 3611 3578 3686 3721
0
10000
20000
30000
40000
50000
60000
70000
80000
90000
No.ofStudents

8. Enrolment 2006-2013 (PolyU)
2009/2010 2010/2011 2011/2012 2012/2013
Sub-degree 4176 4136 3943 3760
Undergraduate 15265 15611 15605 18571
Taught Postgraduate 8099 8105 8448 3760
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
16000
18000
20000
No.ofStudents

9. Non-local Students Intake,
2010-13
*Data includes Macau SAR and Taiwan.
2010/11 2011/12 2012/13
China 8885 9182 11369
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
NoofStudents

10. Non-local Students Intake
(PolyU)
*Data includes Macau SAR and Taiwan.
2010/2011 2011/2012 2012/2013
China 2231 2572 3105
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
No.ofStudents

11. Necessity of EAP
 Hyland (1997) conducted a survey of HK
undergraduates
 Students related their academic success to their
English competence and acknowledged EAP
classes
 They confessed to difficulties in writing, speaking
and specialised vocabulary
 Struggling between acquiring subject knowledge
and mastering English
 Thus students would require language support as
English is still the principle tertiary instruction
language.

12. Necessity of EAP
 Evans and Green (2007) revisited Hyland’s
(1997) question
 Linking sentences, expressing ideas in correct
English and in appropriate academic style are the
most difficult in academic writing skills
 Lexical and grammatical aspects are seen as
difficult
 Problems would likely be intensified as more
students from the Chinese MOI backgraound
enrol on programmes in English-medium
universities.

13. Preliminary Survey
 Online questionnaire survey
 19 post-secondary students
 14 post-graduate students
 Focus group interview
 Semi-formal
 30 – 45 minutes; audio recorded
 3 post-secondary students
 3 post-graduate students

14. Academic Support Received
Sub-degree Students Postgraduate Students

15. Types of Academic Support
Sub-degree Respondents Postgraduate Respondents

16. Types of Texts Covered
Sub-degree Respondents Postgraduate Respondents

17. Content of Support
Sub-degree Respondents Postgraduate Respondents

18. Students’ Reflection
 Sub-degree Students (2013)
 Did not see importance of strategies maintain
textual cohesion or coherence such as “topic
sentences”
 Needed more vocabulary to achieve the
“academic style”
 Writing support only happened during
consultation with supervisors; academic
conventions not explicitly taught
 Regarded findings as the primary source of
evaluation of their own research

19. (Cont’d)
 Postgraduate Students (2009, 2012)
 Viewed “Critical Thinking” as
 Thinking with a “negative” attitude
 Strong mental disposition to argue
 Not easily accepting given knowledge
 Showed lack of confidence in contesting existing
knowledge
 Needed academic vocabulary and “style guide”
 Reliance on “models” or “templates” of academic
writing

20. Lexicogrammatical analysis of effective
student texts using Appraisal
framework
 26 research papers from MAELT students (local,
Mainland Chinese, overseas)
 UAM Corpus Tool (O’Donnell, 2008)
Annotation of Attitudinal values
Delicacy of Analysis: AFFECT, JUDGEMENT,
APPRECIATION without sub-types identified
Corpus analysis
 Attitudinal density (per 1,000 words) in each stage
 Types of Attitude in each stage

21. Structural Patterns of Research Articles
(Lin & Evans, 2012)
Generic Stages Remarks
Stage 1 – Introduction Value and significance
Stage 2 – Literature Review
Related research in the field of
study
Stage 3 – Methodology
Including Data, Participants
(optional)
Stage 4 – Results and Discussion Including Analysis of Results
Stage 5 – Conclusion
Including Implication, Suggestions,
Limitations, Future research, etc.

22. Selection of effective student
texts
 Natural, authentic student texts
 Assignments vs. Research Articles
 Getting A+ in assignments is the priority
 Vocabulary for evaluation is essential
 Repertoire of interpersonal meanings in
student academic discourse

23. Resources for Evaluation and
Critical Stance
 MOOD & MODALITY (Halliday & Matthiessen,
2004)
 Hedges & Boosters (Hyland, 1998, 2004)
 Evaluative language, adjectives as canonical
forms (Swales & Feak, 2004)
 Evaluative nouns & adjectives (Hunston &
Sinclair, 2000)
 Appraisal Analysis (Martin & White 2005, Hood
2010)

24. Discourse Semantics –
Interpersonal Meanings
• Appraisal Analysis (e.g. Martin & White 2005,
Hood 2010)
Engagement
Attitude
Graduation

25. JUDGEMENT & APPRECIATION as
Institutionalised AFFECT
Affect
Appreciation
Judgement
feeling institutionalised as propositions
aesthetics or value (criteria & assessment)
moral or ethics (criteria & assessment)
feeling institutionalised as proposals
Martin & White (2005, p. 45)

26. Evaluation in Academic Writing
 Hood (2004a, 2004b, 2005, 2009, 2010) on
 Evaluation in the Introduction section
 Prosody of interpersonal values in textual periodicity
 Recent studies on research genre
 Attitudinal values in academic writing (Lee, 2008;
Mizusawa, 2010)
 Appraisal resources across generic stages of grant
proposals (Pascual & Unger, 2010)

27. Layers of Theme and New in Discourse
(Martin & Rose 2007, p.199)
Method of development
(genre focus)
Point
(field focus)
Predict AccumulateTheme … Rheme
macroTheme
hyperTheme
hyperNew
macroNew

28. Corpus & Case Study
 UAM Corpus Tool (O’Donnell, 2008)
Annotation of Attitudinal values
Delicacy of Analysis: AFFECT, JUDGEMENT,
APPRECIATION without sub-types identified
Corpus analysis
 Attitudinal density (per 1,000 words) in each stage
 Types of Attitude in each stage

29. Assignment Topic & Requirements
 A small scale classroom-based research project
 Relate observations and reflections to literature
read on the topic.
 Solution-oriented investigation of the approach to
teaching written language (reading and/or writing)
with an insider perspective
 Test the solution or make recommendations to the
solution
 Develop concrete solutions which can then be
incorporated in the classroom

30. Effective Research Paper

32. Attitudinal Density across
the Effective Papers
1.59 0.65 0.61 2.24 0.91
8.74
5.48 7.66 7.32 11.27
43.97
29.63
19.61
23.98
36.64
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
AttitudinalDensity(per1,000words)
Affect Judgement Appreciation
Introductio Literature
Review
Methodolog
y
Findings &
Discussion
Conclusio
n

33. Summary of findings
 APPRECIATION is the dominant choice
to maintain objectivity
 Encoding of JUDGEMENT and AFFECT
depends on objects of study
 Reflecting that effective student writers
were able to institutionalise of feelings
to establish objective criticality

34. APPRECIATION
 Evaluating teaching approaches, background of
study, limitations, etc.
 Teachers always find problems [-app] and difficulties
[-app] in teaching students with low proficiency.
 Such approach is effective [+app] to enable [+app]
students to grasp fundamental facts [+app] and
sequences in the context of exam question.
 Firstly, there is a time constraint [-app] in the lesson.

35. JUDGEMENT
 Evaluating students’/teachers’ involvement,
disposition, capabilities, etc.
 The teacher in study is an experienced [+jud] female
teacher with good pronunciation and excellent class
management skills [+jud].
 Positive reinforcement can always help students to build
up their self-confidence [+jud] and provide them
motivation [+jud] to make progress [+jud] and achieve
an academic goal [+jud].
 Most people ignored [-jud] the teacher and would not
listen [-jud] but doze [-jud] or play mobile phone games
[-jud].

36. AFFECT
 Evaluating students’/teachers’ emotional
responses
 it is easy to find that students were well involved [+aff]
and interested [+aff]. They laughed [+aff] after the
teacher’s joking question in the end.
 The writer does not need to worry [+aff] if his writing
contains grammatical mistakes or incoherence.
 She was young in twenties and interested [+aff] in
experimenting innovative approaches in her teaching.
 As a result, many teachers were frustrated [-aff] at the gap
…, cited by T2 and T3.

37. Support for PolyU students
 Department of English
 Effective English for Postgraduate Research
Students (EEPRS)
 Academic Support Programme (ASP)
 MA Learning Hub
 English Language Centre
 Credit-bearing academic English courses

38. Academic Writing Websites

39. Academic Writing Websites

40. Future Research
 Obtain a larger survey sampling size
 Increase corpus size for colligational patterns
evoking evaluation
 Investigate diachronic change of students'
critical voice represented in written discourse
 Collect teachers’ and students’ opinions about
the academic support website

41. Ambitions
 Develop a dynamic, interactive academic
support platform
 Human-computation for large-scale research
 MOOC
 Map the interpersonal values across academic
genres

42. References

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48. THANK YOU VERY
MUCH!
eric.cheung@polyu.edu.hk