Language proficiency is one of the key goals of the new curriculum, under which students have to complete double the number of English-language learning hours as before. Students need to spend 120 learning hours studying the first-year Core University English, and another 120 hours in their second or third year studying English in their discipline.
However, because students now enter HKU with one less year at secondary school and are also required to take Common Core courses alongside students from different disciplines, Ms Legg had her work cut out for her. She not only had to increase the quantity of material to be taught but also had to adapt the content to the needs of students studying the new curriculum.
“The students have diverse abilities and interests and we have to make sure they can function in both writing and speaking in the Common Core,” said Ms Legg, who believes the variety in ability is the result of the University admitting more students from beyond the elite schools and not a fall in standards (an oft-heard complaint).
“You can’t approach it as a deficit model because it’s not possible to identify everybody’s individual weaknesses. So we set standards that we want students to achieve and teach to those.”
The programme covers such things as academic writing and speaking skills, citation and referencing skills and avoiding plagiarism. Ms Legg said some students did question why they needed to study a subject they thought they had seen the last of. As a result, the Centre’s teachers had to spend a lot of time explaining how the course would help students develop essential skills, all while giving them as many writing and speaking opportunities as possible.
“For the most part the students understand and value what we do. So long as they understand the rationale of the course, we get very good feedback from students,” she said.
Ms Legg began planning the Core University English programme nearly a decade ago, soon after the new curriculum was announced, and has also produced a textbook to support it (now in its second edition following feedback from staff and students). The programme is the focus of her PhD at Macquarie University, which she is close to finishing. She has also recently been promoted to chair of CAES’ Programme Co-ordinators’ Committee.
“What we do well at the centre is tailor our courses to the needs of the students. I was lucky because I had an opportunity to create something new and meaningful, with impacts into the wider curriculum,” she said. “A lot of the work we do is not very visible to the academic community at HKU, so it was nice to get recognised. There is a lot of hard work that goes on by all teachers at the Centre.”
See the original article in Arts Faculty Newsletter Winter 2015.
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