Language in Society

Trilingual Education in Hong Kong Primary Schools: English, Cantonese and Putonghua as Medium of Instruction in Different Subjects and Implications for Language Learning

• PI: Dr Wang Lixun
• General Research Fund, University Grants Committee

While Hong Kong became a trilingual and biliterate society since 1997, Hong Kong primary schools do not have an agreed approach or method for the implementation of trilingual education. This project thus aims to carry out a complete inquiry into trilingual education in Hong Kong primary schools. The research questions are: 1) What are the models of trilingual education in HK primary schools? 2) Which models are more effective in fostering trilingualism? Answers to these questions would provide a better understanding of how to implement trilingual education in Hong Kong primary schools. It is also expected that a trilingual education model that is likely to be effective across schools in general would be proposed and recommended to Hong Kong primary schools upon the completion of the project.

A Typological and Sociolinguistic Study of the Gelong Language Spoken in Western Hainan

• PI: Dr Andy Chin
• General Research Fund, University Grants Committee

Digital Humanities research involves processing of huge amount of textual materials that reflect local culture. With technological enriched digital archives, socio-cultural spaces where researchers from different disciplinary background encounter, share knowledge, beliefs, and values, have been opened up. This project, capitalizing on the research strengths in corpus linguistics and humanities at LML, undertakes two initiatives to build the foundation for developing Digital Humanities as a new research area at EdUHK: (1) Construction of a Chinese corpus for preserving and processing cultural heritage texts in Hong Kong; (2) Development of computational technology and resources for Digital Humanities research.