Promoting Collaborative Team-teaching in BA (Lang Studies) Common Core courses: An Action Research Project – Learning and Teaching Initiatives funded by the UGC

Abstract:

The six Common Core courses (18 credits) in the newly approved BA (Lang Studies) programme were designed to facilitate the development of bilingual academic competence. This is achieved by teaching content courses in Chinese (Cantonese/ Putonghua) or English to both Chinese majors and English majors. Two of the six Common Core courses were taught in 2010-11. Each of them was team-taught by two academic staff, one each from the Department of Chinese and Department of English. Seamless collaboration between teachers of Common Core courses as a prerequisite for high-quality team-teaching was the ultimate goal of this project. There was a number of challenges:

Team-teaching involving colleagues from the two language departments had not been done before; there was a need to explore and experiment with good practices;
Communication between lecturers and tutors from different departments might be a problem if either or both were not sufficiently well-versed in the other language(s); and
It was unclear how classroom code-switching in the lectures and tutorials- arguably inevitable with some Common Core courses – would impact the quality of teaching and students’ learning.

Through multi-methods – class observation, audio-visual recording of lectures and tutorials, keeping weekly logs, bi-weekly meetings with lecturers and tutors, and focus group interviews with students – this proposed action research project was designed to monitor the delivery of the two Common Core courses in 2010-11, track problems arising and assess the effectiveness of various situated coping strategies. The findings helped identify best practices of inter-departmental team-teaching. This in turn helped ensure high-quality teaching and learning in the BA (Lang Studies) programme. It was also conceivable that the findings would inform research on classroom code-switching, among other possible areas.

Code:

T0085

Principal Project Supervisors:

LI, Chor Shing David

Subjects:

Start Date:

01 Sep 2010

End Date:

31 Aug 2011

Status:

Completed

Result:

Major findings from this project are:

Both Chinese majors and English majors found it useful to be exposed to basic concepts in linguistics and literature in ‘the other language’. This allows them to ‘cross cover’ and articulate their thoughts in both Chinese (Cantonese/Putonghua) and English.
Regarding Introduction to linguistics (‘語言學概論’), an English-medium course, the tutorials of Chinese majors was taught by a colleague from the Chinese Department. The concepts introduced in the lectures were clarified and illustrated with ample examples in Chinese (Hong Kong-based or elsewhere in Greater China).
As for the Putonghua-medium文學概論 (‘Introduction to Literature’), there is some indication that English majors found it more difficult to make the link between the fundamental literature concepts introduced in Putonghua at the lectures, and the corresponding and sometimes additional English terms (and content) in their tutorials conducted in English.
The analysis of the multiple data sets-teachers’ weekly logs, focus groups with students, individual interviews with lecturers and tutors, and sample video-recorded lectures and tutorials-indicated that there was a need to simplify the language choice of lectures and tutorials in Common Core courses.

Impact:

The multi-methods approach adopted in this project lends itself very well to collecting high-quality data from the key stakeholders involved in the process of identifying ‘best practices’ toward the effective delivery of lectures and tutorials in Common Core courses which have promotion of bilingual academic competence as a crucial part of its teaching and learning goals. The findings in this project help improve the quality of teaching and learning in the BA (Lang Studies) Common Core courses.

Financial Year:

2009-10

Type:

TDG