Elective Course List and Descriptions

Using language is one of the most creative and distinctive activities that makes us human. We are aware of this creativity when we read imaginative literature, but we also experience it directly in our own everyday language use. This course offers both a linguistic and literary perspective on the various ways in which language influences and shapes such things as, our identity, our emotions, our sense of humour, our experience of technology, and our membership to society. Students learn to analyse and appreciate a range of linguistic, literary and cultural phenomena, including works from the traditional genres of fiction, poetry and drama, as well as other media such as, film, song, and art. From a linguistic perspective, we examine the ways in which language is structured and used creatively for different purposes in both local and global contexts. From a literary perspective, we examine how the creative use of language in literary works is part of how we construct the world and make sense of our place in it. By focusing on different text and media from different times and places, this course aims to foster new under-standings of how language is a powerful tool in shaping our capacities to reflect on our own world and to imagine other worlds beyond it.

This course provides you with the communication skills necessary to perform various academic and non-academic tasks in both online and offline contexts. It demonstrates how differences in audience, communicative purpose and medium shape the content and structure of various written and spoken genres. It also discusses different patterns of development such as narration, description, exemplification, and persuasion, and the importance of thesis statements and topic sentences in organizing ideas. To help you develop an awareness of the structural and stylistic differences of various genres, you will produce a personal reflective essay, a literary analysis paper, and a persuasive presentation, that will be presented in various print, face-to-face and digital formats, using both linguistic and multimodal resources. Through a process oriented approach, you will be producing outlines and drafts of these writing tasks, get feedback, and learn writing strategies such as using sensory details, choosing active, specific verbs, and employing cohesive devices. Recognizing how technology shapes communication practices in diverse ways, this course also draws attention to the affordances and constraints of digital tools such as WordPress, Blackboard, Zoom, and social media platforms.

This course builds on the foundational communication skills introduced in ENGE 1310 and helps you develop the competencies necessary to conduct effective research. It examines the existing structures and conventions of various print and digital genres such as journal articles, blogs, infographics, and YouTube videos. It also discusses different patterns of development such as definition, problem/ solution, comparison/ contrast, classification and division, and the importance of maintaining an appropriate register and style. To help you produce and consume knowledge in creative and critical ways, you will construct an abstract, an annotated bibliography, a literature review, a video, and a research article that discusses an issue in applied linguistics. These texts will be constructed for real world audiences and will involve the use of various multimodal resources. Through a process-oriented approach, you will be producing outlines and drafts of these writing tasks, get feedback, and learn writing strategies such as signposting, using signal phrases, and constructing parallel structures. Recognizing the increasing importance of technology in producing and consuming knowledge, this course also discusses the use of various digital tools such as search engines, reference management software, blogging and video editing platforms.

This course offers an overview of the linguistic structure of English. We systematically study the English language and human language in general at various levels: words, phrases, sentences and beyond. It also provides students with the opportunity to observe and explain the ways in which English is used in everyday life.

This course is designed to provide students with the terminology and analytical skills necessary to describe the grammatical structure of English sentences and their parts. The grammatical concepts and categories introduced in this course are largely ‘traditional’, and common to the competing schools of linguistics.

This course will introduce students to methods of reading literary texts from the major genres of fiction, poetry, and drama. It will illustrate basic literary terms and concepts, and closely study a variety of literary texts written in different times and countries. The emphasis will be on close reading, analysing how the meaning of a literary text is informed by its formal elements and literary conventions. At the same time, the course will also give students an awareness of the interaction between text and context, creative writing and critical reception, and the inheritance and transformation of literary tradition.

Students will study short plays and excerpts from longer plays, workshop them in small groups, with the aim of performing pieces of similar length before an audience. Students will be taught how to interpret a play from a dramaturgical point of view, and be equipped with the fundamental techniques of voice production, creating a character, directing, and interpreting a text for performance.

What is a hero? The stories we read, as well as the movies and television programmes we watch are full of heroism, but do we really know what a hero is? Does a hero have to be good? Do they have to be strong? Do they have to win in the end? Do we have to like them? This course will address many of these questions in relation to many different texts from a wide variety of media: from one of the earliest surviving texts of the ancient world, The Epic of Gilgamesh to the recent global phenomenon, Game of Thrones. We will look especially at the way heroes are shaped by the monsters that they do battle against. Some monsters are fought with fists and swords, but others must be defeated through other means for they lie within the hero himself.

(UGED2195 is double-coded with ENGE2110.) This course takes a closer look at the genre of crime fiction. The course outlines a broad perspective of the genre of crime fiction from its earliest incarnations to modern-day TV drama. We will explore a variety of different forms of crime fiction, and how the genre more generally reflects cultural, historical and social issues. The study material for this course will consist of literary texts, TV series, and films drawn from the popular cultural canon. Topics we will discuss include conspiracy, serial crime, trauma, the epistemology of clues, history and crime, and the criminal mind. The course begins with a historical overview of detective fiction, and concludes with a creative workshop on how to write a detective story. Students with a taste for murder, crime, and suspense — and above all the desire to solve enigmas and mysteries — are welcome to attend this course.

(UGED2186 is double-coded with ENGE2130.) Why read literature? This course offers a broad look through literary history to understand the enduring value and diversity of literature. For each lecture, we will look at a literary masterpiece — from antiquity to the present — and address three main issues: A) the work and its historical context; B) how to read it; and C) themes that make the work relevant in contemporary society and in our everyday lives. The course is designed as an introductory survey of literary works that have had a major impact throughout the ages. Issue A) is intended to give students a sense of the work’s impact in its own time; B) is designed to provide students with the conceptual tools and methodologies to understand a classic work of literature; while C) will provide students with an opportunity to make connections between their own individual concerns and those of the great characters of literature. At the end of the course, students will have encountered some of the most esteemed classics in literary history. No previous studies in literature needed to take this course. Students interested in discussing the ideas, ideals and values of classic literary texts are welcome to attend this course.

(UGED2187 is double-coded with ENGE2140.) What’s a hero? What’s a superhero? Why and when do we need superheroes? How to be one and who gets to be one? We will begin by tracing the origins of this enduring pop fiction, from the hero’s journey in antiquity to the outbreak of the Second World War. We will also explore the moral ambiguity and mixed values of some of the most memorable characters. Furthermore, we will examine revisionist approaches to the superhero genre that respond to the hopes and disillusionments of the contemporary era. Topics covered will include good and evil, power and identity, and justice and responsibility. You may also have the chance to design your own superheroes. It is hoped that by the end of the course, you will develop new ways of reading superhero narratives as uniquely modern myths.

This course studies the relationship between words on the page and audio-visual moving images on the screen by focusing on the adaptations of classic English novels of the nineteenth century. We will look at several nineteenth-century English authors who have been particularly popular with screen adaptations: Austen, Dickens, and Hardy. By close reading of their texts and careful viewing of the big and small screen adaptations of these novels, we will consider the specificity of the textual and the visual media in the narrative, thematic, and aesthetic aspects. The course will explore the interaction between literature and film/television in terms of forms and stylistics, and make broader cultural and historical enquiries about the issues of gender, class, nationhood, and nature that will illuminate nineteenth-century literature in general and its relevance to the present.

Focusing on song writers and performers from the USA, this course introduces students to the art of the popular song lyric of the twentieth century. In the process of studying American popular song lyrics, students will learn about such musical genres as “the blues,” “gospel,” “tin pan alley,” “folk,” “country,” and “rock and roll” as well as the elements of American history that give rise to each of these types of musical lyric. Since one of the course elements is the relationship of musical lyric to musical sound, we will spend considerable class time listening to popular songs , paying attention to the way a lyric’s meaning is conveyed through such elements as vocal style and musical arrangement.

(UGED2197 is double-coded with ENGE2190.) The course will consider myths and legends from around the world with particular sensitivity to one peculiar aspect of them: that the gods depicted in them often behave no better than the people whose lives they determine. In order to explain why this is the case, the course will seek to understand the nature and function of myth, and the complex uses to which they are put in order to explain some of our most pressing questions: How did we all begin? Where are we? Who are we? Why is there so much wrong with the world? What’s the solution? Where will we go when we die? How will it all end? Although the concept of myth might seem outdated in modern secular culture, by drawing comparisons between the ancient and contemporary worlds, students will be encouraged to see how myth-making of some kind is as inevitable and innately human as the questions which prompt it. The course will begin by establishing some archetypal similarities between myths – from myths of Creation to myths of Apocalypse – and then consider myths from specific cultures – including Greco-Roman, Scandinavian, and Chinese – before considering the appeal of myth in contemporary popular culture, especially The Lord of Rings, and Game of Thrones.

This course takes a closer look at the intimate connections between song and poetry. The history of song has always been closely connected with the oral tradition in literature; conversely, the musicality of literature owes much to the song tradition. Gospel, Negro Spirituals, Folk Music, the Bard Tradition, the Sean Nós tradition, the ballad and the lyric form in poetry, as well as popular music and musicals will all be examined on this course. The course will examine the different song traditions in their social and political contexts. The course will also include a song-writing element. There will be a song-writing workshop with a well-known local songwriter. Students will be asked to write a song in any genre of their choice (folk song, protest song, spiritual song etc.) and then to have that song performed either by themselves or someone else in the class. No previous studies in literature or music are needed to take this course. Students interested in exploring the connections between song and poetry and between song-writing and the poetic craft are welcome to attend this course.

This course looks at the close relationship between existentialist philosophy and literature. Existentialism is a philosophical movement that focuses on human existence and the challenges of choice, freedom, and responsibility in the modern world. We will explore a variety of existentialist positions—including those of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, and de Beauvoir—to understand how existentialist thought constitutes an important intellectual context for many themes in modern literature, including authenticity, alienation, and anxiety. Authors to be discussed include Kafka, Dostoevsky, Ionesco, Camus, Beckett and others. Students interested in literary representations of the existential challenges of the human condition are welcome to attend this course.

The first half of this course will focus on representative European and American plays of the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries and trace their significance in the development of modern and contemporary drama. The second half of the course will explore twenty-first century plays and their relationship to some of the most pressing questions of the contemporary period. As students become familiar with the major styles, concepts, and figures of modern and contemporary drama, they will also develop an awareness of the historical contexts from which the plays emerge and the social and cultural issues to which they respond. Finally, students will investigate drama as both a written text and a performance event and, through their readings, discussions, and assignments, gain an appreciation of its uniqueness as a “living” art form. The course readings will include plays by the following authors: Henrik Ibsen, Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Miller, Samuel Beckett, Caryl Churchill, Ayad Akhtar, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, and Lynn Nottage.

(UGED2194 is double-coded with ENGE2360.) This course provides a framework for understanding the themes and motifs of children’s literature. It also looks at representations of children in literature. We will analyse some essential, central texts as well as contemporary popular books for children. The uses of fantasy and the educational aspects of books for children will be discussed, along with notions of childhood and adulthood. Through close reading of set texts, students will be able to engage in critical techniques applicable to most literature. This is because the best texts for children satisfy sensitive adult readers too.

This course examines some of the key works of dystopian fiction written in the twentieth-century. It does so by thinking about the ways in which the book – that common symbol of culture and civilization – is treated in these works. The course begins by contextualizing the notion of dystopia and its cognates. After revealing a strong link between the dystopian image and the emasculation of culture, we move on to consider the particular visions of society presented by Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, and Anthony Burgess. As we shall see, they are visions of society that insist that we not only question our idea of “culture” but also how culture itself intervenes in the inevitable tension between state and individual.

This course provides an introduction to the art of reading poetry. We will read and analyze a range of poems of diverse styles and forms from the Renaissance to the present day so as to stimulate students’ creative and critical responses to poetry. We will also read and analyze contemporary poetry written in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. While this is not a course on creative writing, it nonetheless explores, among other topics, the role of the imagination, the act of writing, the purposes of poetry, the notions of tradition and of the individual talent, for these are issues with which poets engage, whether directly or indirectly, in their poems.

This course introduces students to basic concepts in phonetics, the scientific study of speech, and in phonology, the study of sound patterns in various human languages with principal emphasis on the English language. Students will gain an understanding of the articulatory mechanisms for producing consonants, vowels, as well as stress and intonation. They will be introduced to the International Phonetic Alphabet, and sounds from a variety of languages. In the phonology part of the course, students will analyze the patterns governing the distribution of sounds in different languages. A major aim of this course is to enable students to transcribe English words and utterances, and to develop an appreciation of the diversity and systematicity of sound structure in human language.

(UGEC2188 is double-coded with ENGE2530.) The objective of this course is to give students an overview of the status, features, and use of Hong Kong English (HKE), the variety of English commonly used in Hong Kong. In the first part of the course, students will be introduced to the concept of ‘world Englishes’ and examine different theoretical frameworks for conceptualizing the evolution of new varieties of English. The course then examines the history of English in Hong Kong in juxtaposition to both Cantonese and Putonghua, politically and in terms of educational policies and practices in Hong Kong. The second part of the course examines both spoken and written features of HKE, including grammar, discourse particles, vocabulary, and pronunciation, as well as the practices of code-mixing and code-switching. In the third part of the course, language attitudes and ideologies towards ‘standard’ language varieties (for example American and British English) in relation to HKE will be explored. The course will also examine the relationship between use of HKE and identity as well as gender.

This course introduces the role linguistics and linguists play in forensic science and legal investigations. Forensic linguists are like the Sherlock Holmes of language – they offer their expert opinions about linguistic evidence in the legal process. This course introduces some major topics in forensic linguistics, including authorship analysis, speaker identification, trial discourse, plagiarism and collusion, and linguistic evidence in cybercrime. High profile cases where forensic linguists have contributed to legal investigations will be discussed. Students will also be introduced the methods and tools commonly used in forensic linguistic analyses of spoken and written data. No prior knowledge of law is required.

(UGEC2189 is double-coded with ENGE2600.) Although English has long spread around the world, the consequences of this spread are only now beginning to be appreciated by its speakers in their many locations. The discourse of world Englishes aims to re-imagine our understanding of the English language. The difference between error and innovation can no longer be decided by reference to ‘ownership’ of the language. Additionally, the language is beginning to be a medium of the expression of identity for more and more people in very different contexts. World English must be pluralized, which is why we think in terms of world Englishes. This course is split into two sections. The first section will introduce you to issues in the discourse of world Englishes: innovation, variety, creativity, globalization, etc. The second section will look at specific case studies of Asian Englishes, such as the use of English in Singapore, China, and Japan.

This module will review and critique past and current theories of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) from a range of theoretical perspectives: linguistic, cognitive, psychological and social. It will also examine the wide range of factors which affect the outcome of SLA. It will then continue by outlining the implications for teaching and learning and how far these have an impact on approaches, methods, strategies and techniques in the classroom.

This course serves as a general introduction to the field of sociolinguistics – the study of the relationship between language and society. Students will be introduced to basic theories, research methods, and analytical tools in sociolinguistics. They will also be given opportunities to investigate the link between language practices and social factors (e.g., ethnicity, gender, and class). Topics covered in this course include code-switching, language variation and change, language in the media, styles, identity, language attitudes, as well as language policy. Examples will be drawn from a wide range of social contexts, with a focus on the English language. Sociolinguistic topics in Hong Kong are given particular consideration.

Students will study short plays and excerpts from longer plays, workshop them in small groups, with the aim of performing pieces of similar length before an audience. Students will be taught how to interpret a play from a dramaturgical point of view, and be equipped with the fundamental techniques of voice production, creating a character, directing, and interpreting a text for performance. The specific focus of this course will be comedy.

This course aims to help students enhance their communication with people who have a different language and cultural background. Topics include the concept of culture; language and cultural socialization; cultural variations in verbal and nonverbal communication; language, identity and biases; cultural diversity in perception, values, and worldview; intercultural-intimate relationships; culture shock and intercultural adjustment/adaptation; intercultural conflict and mediation; and English in the global workplace. This course should be of interest to local and international students, and is especially appropriate for those who plan to travel, study, or work abroad.

The aim of this course is to equip students with the grammatical knowledge that is essential for ESL teaching and learning. The first part of the course introduces students to key concepts involved in grammar pedagogy and teaching methodologies. The second part of the course covers grammatical forms and structures in English that may be particularly difficult for second language learners to acquire, with an emphasis on understanding the connection between form and meaning. Students apply what they have learned through conducting mini-lessons and team-teaching. At the end of the course, students should feel more confident about the use of grammar terminology in second language teaching and more knowledgeable about a task-based and discourse-oriented approach to grammar teaching in second language classrooms.

Prerequisite: ENGE 1520

This course introduces students to the study of English words and vocabulary acquisition. In the first part of the course, we will look at the evolution of the English vocabulary such as historical influences and semantic change. Then we will look at English morphology and word formation, which will be followed by topics on meaning relations and semantic fields. In the second part of the course, the focus will shift to the acquisition of vocabulary and we will start by discussing whether English has a core vocabulary and what it means to know a word. Then topics on semantic transfer, collocation, academic vocabulary and also practical techniques in vocabulary teaching will be covered.

Students will be selected by a panel of senior staff based on achievement in relevant Department courses and willingness and likely capacity to benefit. Classes will be divided in two strands: “Literature, Linguistics and Society”; “Current Affairs: Britain and the World”. Oxford tutors will conduct 4 hours’ face-to-face teaching a day for 5 days a week. Students will spend some evenings and weekend days in excursions to London and Stratford for plays and other cultural sites. Fieldwork and cultural explorations will be closely supervised by College nominees and/or Department staff. Full reflective essays and diary-plus-video are required of all participants for presentation within CUHK at their own college presentation evenings, and to other English Department majors at university orientation events. Each student on return will be expected to volunteer for either a teaching role for underprivileged students or one of CUHK’s ICARE service projects (Possibility of financial contribution being waived for needier candidates). Classes will take place in St Hilda’s College Oxford for 3 weeks during the summer term, between second and third years.

The aim of the course is to build on the skills that students acquired in previous communication courses and to further enhance their writing and speaking competence in preparation for more advanced major courses and also the future workplace. Using a short novel as the basis for three written assignments, students will practice how to summarize, interpret and analyze literary texts. Feedback from peers and teachers will enable students to identify areas for improvement and polish their writing skills. Next, the course will provide guidance to students for writing their cover letters and resumes with the purpose of highlighting their strengths, accomplishments and aspirations. In the last past of the course, we will discuss how to prepare for job interviews and conduct practice to hone students’ oral self-presentation skills. It is hoped that by the end of the course, students can become competent and confident users of English across a variety of contexts and requirements.

The course will involve an in-depth study of Romanticism and evaluate its significance in English poetic tradition. It will cover the six major Romantic poets, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats, and from some characteristics they share, outline the ‘sprit’ of their age. At the same time, the course will also emphasise the distinctiveness of each Romantic poet, to demonstrate the complexity and diversity contained in the term ‘Romanticism’. We will study the representative poems of each poet carefully in relation to his aesthetic ideas and life experience. The course will emphasise close reading, but it will also draw attention to the relationship between text and context, poetry and poet, poetic creation and critical value.

(UGED3143 is double-coded with ENGE3220.) The aim of this course is to familiarize students with the kindred relationships between film and literature as well as their essential mediumistic differences such as film and the novel, film and drama/theatre, film and poetry, etc. Their similar or different uses of time and space, and problems of adaptation will be discussed in some works which have both filmic and literary versions.

This course is structured as: (i) a series of writing workshops; and (ii) projects that facilitate the writing of poetry. While we will look at the manifestos of poets and explore debates in the field of poetics, the bulk of this course is ultimately focused on the act of writing. We will explore how one may learn from the works of canonical poets so as to hone one’s writing skills. There also will be some emphasis on exploring local and international publishing avenues, whether online or in print. There will also be sessions on how to present one’s own poems.

This course aims first to introduce students to autobiography, one of the most popular forms of writing in the contemporary world. It will raise such questions as, why has this kind of narrative been so attractive to writers in cross-cultural situations, such as Chinese-Americans? The course will focus specifically on a group of (mainly American) immigrant autobiographers who write about the experience of living between a first language and English. They raise a range of fascinating questions about language and identity. Students will be asked to reflect on these questions and on the similarities and differences between these writers’ lives and their own experience in Hong Kong. The course will aim to teach students how to approach, analyse and theorize about autobiographical narratives. Students will be given opportunity to develop their analytical skills in essay-type responses to the prescribed texts. They will also be given opportunity to develop their narrative skills in their own life-writing, using the prescribed texts as models. Both forms of written exercise are designed to extend, as well as test, students’ understanding of autobiography as a genre.

The aim of the course is to introduce students to the art of the short story. Through reading well-crafted stories, students will learn how to appreciate short fiction and become familiar with the different elements of the short story form: plot, point of view, dialogue and action, character development as well as language, voice and style. A main focus of the course will be to look at how language is used and manipulated to create meaning in the texts.

Human beings tell stories to find meaning and make sense of their lives. We are born with the need to listen to stories – and to tell them. Students who are interested in writing short stories will be able to apply the techniques discussed in class to their own work and have their stories workshopped.

This course investigates Hong Kong literature in English from the twentieth century onwards, looking at its representations of Hong Kong, its people, and its varying political and social issues. The texts in this course were published originally in English and written either by Hong Kong authors, and/or set significantly in Hong Kong. They were chosen for the importance that Hong Kong plays in them in a wide variety of ways. Set in different decades, written in different genres, and drawing on a range of themes, these works allow us to appreciate the unique vibrancy, hybridity and contradictions that comprise Hong Kong: for instance, as a rural but also urban space; as a place of restless transition but also as a permanent home; and as a place of both divide and continuity across generations and cultural groups. We will constantly move between literary and theoretical exploration and their application to real-life issues in Hong Kong, encouraging students’ sense of personal participation in constructing individual notions of what “Hong Kong” means.

This course is designed to investigate topics in creative writing not normally covered under generic creative writing courses. It may involve any one or more of the following areas in creative writing studies: literary community and global citizenship, writing for new media, creative writing and other arts, creative writing and social enterprises, phenomenology and creative writing, creative writing and research, writing speculative fiction, writing flash fiction, teaching creative writing, history of creative writing, and the writing of auto-ethnography. Students are allowed to take the above course more than once and gain the units each time they pass the course. However, students cannot take courses with the same course code more than once in a single term.

This course focuses on the art of writing about Hong Kong. Through the use of writing prompts, it introduces students to the different ways of writing about different social and physical environments in Hong Kong. Students will be able to discuss and articulate the feelings, thoughts and experiences evoked by these social and physical environments. They will be able to produce writings that evoke the sense of place that is unique to Hong Kong. They will be able to consider issues such as genre, gender and language use in relation to readership. Through active participation in class discussion and exploration of actual environments, students will acquire different perspectives and understand the diverse possibilities in relation to writing about Hong Kong. They will be able to assess their own writing and those of others.

This course will study literature that represents visual arts or, ekphrasis. The term ‘ekphrasis’ can be broadly defined as verbal representation of visual arts and has become a vibrant field of study for a few decades. We will look at some most famous ekphrastic texts from the beginning of Western literature to this day, focusing on poems evoking either actual or imaginary artworks, but branching out to ekphrasis in fiction and new media as well. In the process, we will reflect on the evolution of the term ‘ekphrasis’ from a rhetorical device to a site of rivalry and on to a mode of encounter between the verbal and visual medium. The course will explore interactions of multiple media while foregrounding characteristics of each medium.

In this course, we will read a selection of Alice Munro’s short stories and analyze them as the author’s retrospection, reconfiguration and reimagining of places, people and events in her own life. From the recasting of her mother, father and other family members in her works to the reconstruction of tales of tragedy, love and faith, Munro writes in order to open up the past, take a good look at it, feel the life, and discover the story. This idea of life as story and the power of storying lives in the construction self and identity is drawn from narrative psychology and will be used as a springboard for students to experiment with life-writing in the course. Students will be given opportunities to re-tell the stories of their own lives and/or the lives of their family and friends in ways that allow a re-interpretation of the past as well as a re-orientation of the future.

This course introduces students to the playwright William Shakespeare. By reading a number of Shakespeare’s plays, drawn from the genres of comedy, history, tragedy and romance, students will achieve an understanding of Shakespeare’s language, his modes of characterization, his methods of creating dramatic situations, and his representative themes. Students will also study the relationship of Shakespeare’s scripts to their original Elizabethan and Jacobean performance contexts. Time permitting, attention will also be given to the performance history of Shakespearean drama and the continuing importance of that drama in twentieth-first century world theatre.

The aim of the course is to introduce students to the basic concepts in contrastive linguistics through a comparative study of English and Chinese. The course will begin by introducing students to language transfer for a better understanding of the role of L1 in second language learning. English and Chinese will then be compared on the phonological, morphological and lexical levels. Different skills required in reading English and Chinese will also be introduced. Next, we move on to conceptual metaphors and will look at the use of metaphorical expressions in the two languages. In the lecture on contrastive pragmatics, we will explore how politeness strategies differ across cultures, with the focus on compliment response strategies. Then the major grammatical, syntactic and textual features of English and Chinese will be presented and some salient contrasts between them will be highlighted. The findings of such an English-Chinese contrastive analysis will be highly relevant to language teaching and learning as differences between the two languages are commonly reflected in errors made by second language learners.

This undergraduate course is an introduction to psycholinguistics — the study of how human beings comprehend, produce, and acquire language in vivo. This is in contrast to the more static view on language or the study of it in other areas of theoretical linguistics. One guiding question in this course is what psycho-linguistic mechanisms support the unique human capacity for language (and how they operate). We will explore this question from a multi-disciplinary perspective, combining insights and tools from cognitive psychology, linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and computer science. Topics we will cover include visual and auditory recognition of words, sentence comprehension, speech production and errors, language acquisition, neural representation of language, bilingual language processing, simultaneous interpretation, aphasia and language disorders. In this course, students will learn to design psycholinguistic experiments using experimental paradigms such as priming, self-paced reading, and language switching tasks. Other advanced methodologies (e.g. electrophysiology, eye-tracking, and fMRI technologies) will also be introduced.

This course is designed for students who are interested in the teaching and learning of English as a foreign/second language. The course examines different aspects of English language teaching, including the four major skill areas – reading, writing, listening, and speaking – as well as the teaching of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. In the examination of these different language areas, the course first focuses on the acquisition and development of these areas, asking the question of how learners acquire/develop vocabulary/grammar/pronunciation as well as reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills in the foreign/second language. After the learning and development of each of these skill areas has been examined, the course focuses on the teaching of each of these areas. In this discussion, the course will examine curriculum design, models, tasks, and techniques for teaching each language area.

This course introduces some major approaches as well as basic principles and tools in the analysis of texts. Concepts such as cohesion and coherence, relevance, context, and identity are drawn upon to analyze a range of discourses and text types in our contemporary society. Texts to be discussed include advertisements, news reports, interviews, political speeches, websites, book reviews, etc. The relevance of discourse analysis to foreign/second language teaching may also be considered.

This course provides an introduction to the relationship between gender and language use. Drawing from empirical and theoretical studies in sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and discourse analysis, this course addresses a range of issues. Examples of key issues include the acquisition of gender-differentiated language, gender and conversational interaction (e.g. extralinguistic constructions of gender or politeness, hedging or interruptions), sexism in language, gender images, and the relationships among language, gender, and other social constructs such as class, culture, and ethnicity.

This course provides an undergraduate-level overview of research methods within the field of applied linguistics. It provides students with vital skills necessary for designing, conducting, and evaluating research projects centered on language use and communication in real-world contexts, in anticipation of research endeavors like their final year or capstone projects. Participants will be introduced to research paradigms and principles tailored to applied linguistics, in addition to various research methodologies. These encompass quantitative methods like experiments and corpus-based studies, as well as qualitative approaches such as case studies and ethnographic research. The course places a particular emphasis on the practical application of these methods within the realm of applied (English) linguistics.

The course delves into an extensive array of data collection techniques commonly employed in applied linguistics research, including surveys, narrative studies, ethnographic observations, and corpus analysis. Through class activities, students will develop the skills needed to select the most suitable methods for their research questions, construct data collection instruments, and efficiently manage and analyze data sets. The course covers data analysis techniques encompassing both quantitative and qualitative methods. Students will have the opportunity to analyze quantitative data using statistical software and interpret the results, as well as to develop skills in the analysis of qualitative data, employing methods like thematic analysis and critical analysis. Several hands-on activities will be provided to encourage students to actively interact with and better grasp the concepts.

This internship course is designed to bridge students’ academic studies with real-world professional experience, offering a unique opportunity to apply classroom knowledge in a practical work environment. By integrating academic theories, practices, and skills with workplace applications, students will gain hands-on experience and deepen their understanding of how English is used in professional settings.
Students are required to complete a minimum of 200 hours of full-time or part-time work at either local or international organizations where English is used for internal and external communication. While the department provides a range of pre-approved host organizations, students may also propose self-found internships, subject to the approval of the course leader.
To prepare for the recruitment process, students must attend all the workshops organized by Course leader and two mandatory workshops from the Career Planning and Development (CPDC) from the Office of Student Affairs, CUHK. This course ultimately fosters critical reflection on the relevance and effectiveness of classroom learning in professional contexts, equipping students with valuable skills for their future careers.

In this course, students will delve into the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and human language. The course will primarily focus on English, while also challenging students to think critically about the relevance of the course material to their own languages or languages of interest. The course takes a multi-faceted approach, combining lectures, presentations, and hands-on activities to equip students with a solid understanding of AI fundamentals. As the course progresses, students will explore how computers process and generate human language, as well as how AI can be used to analyze language data. Ultimately, they will critically evaluate various AI-based techniques, while applying them to investigate key questions about human language. The course curriculum includes modules on language and computers, learner corpora, text preprocessing, speech-to-text, data visualization, and more.

This objective of this course is to (a) provide an overview of a variety of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, (b) enable students to evaluate AI technologies, and (c) facilitate students to apply AI technologies to identify key problems in their major field (e.g., business, education, philosophy, social science) and/or explore potential solutions for those problems. It incorporates a hybrid approach combining lecture segments and hands-on activities so that students are able to have a better understanding of what AI is and how AI technologies have been used for diverse purposes. The first part of the course focuses on exploring a variety of applications (and programming codes in Python) for image creation, text mining, web crawling, modelling, speech recognition, conversation, etc. In the second part, students work on developing a website where they introduce and discuss the problems and solutions of their interest, which are explored using AI technologies.

How do digital media like Instagram, TikTok, and ChatGPT shape the way we use language and construct meaning? This course examines language and discourse practices in our contemporary digital society. Drawing on concepts and insights from sociolinguistics, (critical) discourse analysis, and media studies, students will explore linguistic and discourse practices across digital media platforms and devices. The course offers a critical perspective on language and digital technology by considering the social implications of these practices. Key topics include human-technology communication, multimodal discourse through emoji and memes, the role of Gen-AI in meaningmaking, fake news and disinformation, online/offline nexus in post-digital communication, and English and linguistic diversity in digital media. The course examines both opportunities and challenges by exploring how digital media, while giving rise to new forms of expression, raise concerns about power, privacy, and inequality.

An intensive study of a major issue in literary studies. Topic(s) will be defined from year to year by the Department of English. Offerings with different subtitles can be taken up for credit, up to a maximum of two times.

Over the past few decades, second/foreign language teaching has evolved from a pre-occupation with methods of teaching to a broader perspective of teaching and learning. Within this wider perspective, it is important that teachers not only concern themselves with how they teach, i.e. the methods/approaches and techniques they use, but also develop an understanding of how learners learn, i.e. the processes of learning. Hence, this course particularly focusses on a number of individual difference variables (e.g., personality, motivation, language aptitude, learning styles, and language learning strategies) that affect individuals’ ultimate level of language achievement.

In this capstone course, English majors in their final year of studies will carry out independent research on a topic approved by the Department and supervised by a teacher. It may involve a major essay (15-20 pages) in literature or linguistics, or it may be interdisciplinary. It may also take the form of a project or creative work such as a collection of poetry or short stories. The major paper/project must include critical reflection on the research process, build on undergraduate learning in the major, and make connections with future studies/career plans. The proposal for this course must be submitted to the Department before the term begins. At the end of the semester, all students taking ENGE 4700 will give an oral presentation and be evaluated by a panel of teachers and peers. This is a required course for all four-year students who have joined the Department of English during or after the 2012-2013 academic year.

ENGE4701 is the first in a two-part capstone series for final-year English majors, designed to support students as they embark on independent research projects. The research may involve a major essay in literature or linguistics, or it may be interdisciplinary. It may also take the form of a project or creative work such as a collection of poetry or short stories. The major paper/project must include critical reflection on the research process, build on undergraduate learning in the major, and make connections with future studies/career plans. Under the guidance of a faculty supervisor and with approval from the Department, students will develop comprehensive project plans and participate in peer-led discussions sharing initial proposals, pilot studies, material from developing literature reviews, and/or preliminary drafts of creative work. This preparatory phase emphasizes critical reflection and requires students to integrate their undergraduate learning while establishing connections to future academic or career goals. The course culminates in an assessed project outline, forming the foundation for continued development in ENGE 4702. Completion of ENGE 4701 and 4702 is mandatory for all English majors entering the program in the 2025-2026 academic year or later.

ENGE 4702 is the second course in the capstone series for final-year English majors, building on the preparatory work completed in ENGE 4701. This course guides students through the intermediate and final stages of their independent research projects, under the supervision of a faculty member. The research may involve a major essay in literature or linguistics, or it may be interdisciplinary. It may also take the form of a project or creative work such as a collection of poetry or short stories. The major paper/project must include critical reflection on the research process, build on undergraduate learning in the major, and make connections with future studies/career plans. At the end of the semester, all students enrolled in ENGE 4702 will deliver an oral presentation to an audience of their peers and a panel of instructors, with the evaluation conducted by the instructors. Completion of ENGE 4701 and 4702 is mandatory for all English majors entering the program in the 2025-2026 academic year or later.

(UGED2186 is double-coded with ENGE2130.) Why read literature? This course offers a broad look through literary history to understand the enduring value and diversity of literature. For each lecture, we will look at a literary masterpiece — from antiquity to the present — and address three main issues: A) the work and its historical context; B) how to read it; and C) themes that make the work relevant in contemporary society and in our everyday lives. The course is designed as an introductory survey of literary works that have had a major impact throughout the ages. Issue A) is intended to give students a sense of the work’s impact in its own time; B) is designed to provide students with the conceptual tools and methodologies to understand a classic work of literature; while C) will provide students with an opportunity to make connections between their own individual concerns and those of the great characters of literature. At the end of the course, students will have encountered some of the most esteemed classics in literary history. No previous studies in literature needed to take this course. Students interested in discussing the ideas, ideals and values of classic literary texts are welcome to attend this course.

The first half of this course will focus on representative European and American plays of the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries and trace their significance in the development of modern and contemporary drama. The second half of the course will explore twenty-first century plays and their relationship to some of the most pressing questions of the contemporary period. As students become familiar with the major styles, concepts, and figures of modern and contemporary drama, they will also develop an awareness of the historical contexts from which the plays emerge and the social and cultural issues to which they respond. Finally, students will investigate drama as both a written text and a performance event and, through their readings, discussions, and assignments, gain an appreciation of its uniqueness as a “living” art form. The course readings will include plays by the following authors: Henrik Ibsen, Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Miller, Samuel Beckett, Caryl Churchill, Ayad Akhtar, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, and Lynn Nottage.

This course examines some of the key works of dystopian fiction written in the twentieth-century. It does so by thinking about the ways in which the book – that common symbol of culture and civilization – is treated in these works. The course begins by contextualizing the notion of dystopia and its cognates. After revealing a strong link between the dystopian image and the emasculation of culture, we move on to consider the particular visions of society presented by Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, and Anthony Burgess. As we shall see, they are visions of society that insist that we not only question our idea of “culture” but also how culture itself intervenes in the inevitable tension between state and individual.

This course provides an introduction to the art of reading poetry. We will read and analyze a range of poems of diverse styles and forms from the Renaissance to the present day so as to stimulate students’ creative and critical responses to poetry. We will also read and analyze contemporary poetry written in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. While this is not a course on creative writing, it nonetheless explores, among other topics, the role of the imagination, the act of writing, the purposes of poetry, the notions of tradition and of the individual talent, for these are issues with which poets engage, whether directly or indirectly, in their poems.

The course will involve an in-depth study of Romanticism and evaluate its significance in English poetic tradition. It will cover the six major Romantic poets, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats, and from some characteristics they share, outline the ‘sprit’ of their age. At the same time, the course will also emphasise the distinctiveness of each Romantic poet, to demonstrate the complexity and diversity contained in the term ‘Romanticism’. We will study the representative poems of each poet carefully in relation to his aesthetic ideas and life experience. The course will emphasise close reading, but it will also draw attention to the relationship between text and context, poetry and poet, poetic creation and critical value.

This course introduces students to the playwright William Shakespeare. By reading a number of Shakespeare’s plays, drawn from the genres of comedy, history, tragedy and romance, students will achieve an understanding of Shakespeare’s language, his modes of characterization, his methods of creating dramatic situations, and his representative themes. Students will also study the relationship of Shakespeare’s scripts to their original Elizabethan and Jacobean performance contexts. Time permitting, attention will also be given to the performance history of Shakespearean drama and the continuing importance of that drama in twentieth-first century world theatre.

Students will study short plays and excerpts from longer plays, workshop them in small groups, with the aim of performing pieces of similar length before an audience. Students will be taught how to interpret a play from a dramaturgical point of view, and be equipped with the fundamental techniques of voice production, creating a character, directing, and interpreting a text for performance.

What is a hero? The stories we read, as well as the movies and television programmes we watch are full of heroism, but do we really know what a hero is? Does a hero have to be good? Do they have to be strong? Do they have to win in the end? Do we have to like them? This course will address many of these questions in relation to many different texts from a wide variety of media: from one of the earliest surviving texts of the ancient world, The Epic of Gilgamesh to the recent global phenomenon, Game of Thrones. We will look especially at the way heroes are shaped by the monsters that they do battle against. Some monsters are fought with fists and swords, but others must be defeated through other means for they lie within the hero himself.

(UGED2195 is double-coded with ENGE2110.) This course takes a closer look at the genre of crime fiction. The course outlines a broad perspective of the genre of crime fiction from its earliest incarnations to modern-day TV drama. We will explore a variety of different forms of crime fiction, and how the genre more generally reflects cultural, historical and social issues. The study material for this course will consist of literary texts, TV series, and films drawn from the popular cultural canon. Topics we will discuss include conspiracy, serial crime, trauma, the epistemology of clues, history and crime, and the criminal mind. The course begins with a historical overview of detective fiction, and concludes with a creative workshop on how to write a detective story. Students with a taste for murder, crime, and suspense — and above all the desire to solve enigmas and mysteries — are welcome to attend this course.

(UGED2187 is double-coded with ENGE2140.) What’s a hero? What’s a superhero? Why and when do we need superheroes? How to be one and who gets to be one? We will begin by tracing the origins of this enduring pop fiction, from the hero’s journey in antiquity to the outbreak of the Second World War. We will also explore the moral ambiguity and mixed values of some of the most memorable characters. Furthermore, we will examine revisionist approaches to the superhero genre that respond to the hopes and disillusionments of the contemporary era. Topics covered will include good and evil, power and identity, and justice and responsibility. You may also have the chance to design your own superheroes. It is hoped that by the end of the course, you will develop new ways of reading superhero narratives as uniquely modern myths.

This course studies the relationship between words on the page and audio-visual moving images on the screen by focusing on the adaptations of classic English novels of the nineteenth century. We will look at several nineteenth-century English authors who have been particularly popular with screen adaptations: Austen, Dickens, and Hardy. By close reading of their texts and careful viewing of the big and small screen adaptations of these novels, we will consider the specificity of the textual and the visual media in the narrative, thematic, and aesthetic aspects. The course will explore the interaction between literature and film/television in terms of forms and stylistics, and make broader cultural and historical enquiries about the issues of gender, class, nationhood, and nature that will illuminate nineteenth-century literature in general and its relevance to the present.

Focusing on song writers and performers from the USA, this course introduces students to the art of the popular song lyric of the twentieth century. In the process of studying American popular song lyrics, students will learn about such musical genres as “the blues,” “gospel,” “tin pan alley,” “folk,” “country,” and “rock and roll” as well as the elements of American history that give rise to each of these types of musical lyric. Since one of the course elements is the relationship of musical lyric to musical sound, we will spend considerable class time listening to popular songs , paying attention to the way a lyric’s meaning is conveyed through such elements as vocal style and musical arrangement.

(UGED2197 is double-coded with ENGE2190.) The course will consider myths and legends from around the world with particular sensitivity to one peculiar aspect of them: that the gods depicted in them often behave no better than the people whose lives they determine. In order to explain why this is the case, the course will seek to understand the nature and function of myth, and the complex uses to which they are put in order to explain some of our most pressing questions: How did we all begin? Where are we? Who are we? Why is there so much wrong with the world? What’s the solution? Where will we go when we die? How will it all end? Although the concept of myth might seem outdated in modern secular culture, by drawing comparisons between the ancient and contemporary worlds, students will be encouraged to see how myth-making of some kind is as inevitable and innately human as the questions which prompt it. The course will begin by establishing some archetypal similarities between myths – from myths of Creation to myths of Apocalypse – and then consider myths from specific cultures – including Greco-Roman, Scandinavian, and Chinese – before considering the appeal of myth in contemporary popular culture, especially The Lord of Rings, and Game of Thrones.

This course looks at the close relationship between existentialist philosophy and literature. Existentialism is a philosophical movement that focuses on human existence and the challenges of choice, freedom, and responsibility in the modern world. We will explore a variety of existentialist positions—including those of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, and de Beauvoir—to understand how existentialist thought constitutes an important intellectual context for many themes in modern literature, including authenticity, alienation, and anxiety. Authors to be discussed include Kafka, Dostoevsky, Ionesco, Camus, Beckett and others. Students interested in literary representations of the existential challenges of the human condition are welcome to attend this course.

(UGED2194 is double-coded with ENGE2360.) This course provides a framework for understanding the themes and motifs of children’s literature. It also looks at representations of children in literature. We will analyse some essential, central texts as well as contemporary popular books for children. The uses of fantasy and the educational aspects of books for children will be discussed, along with notions of childhood and adulthood. Through close reading of set texts, students will be able to engage in critical techniques applicable to most literature. This is because the best texts for children satisfy sensitive adult readers too.

Students will study short plays and excerpts from longer plays, workshop them in small groups, with the aim of performing pieces of similar length before an audience. Students will be taught how to interpret a play from a dramaturgical point of view, and be equipped with the fundamental techniques of voice production, creating a character, directing, and interpreting a text for performance. The specific focus of this course will be comedy.

Students will be selected by a panel of senior staff based on achievement in relevant Department courses and willingness and likely capacity to benefit. Classes will be divided in two strands: “Literature, Linguistics and Society”; “Current Affairs: Britain and the World”. Oxford tutors will conduct 4 hours’ face-to-face teaching a day for 5 days a week. Students will spend some evenings and weekend days in excursions to London and Stratford for plays and other cultural sites. Fieldwork and cultural explorations will be closely supervised by College nominees and/or Department staff. Full reflective essays and diary-plus-video are required of all participants for presentation within CUHK at their own college presentation evenings, and to other English Department majors at university orientation events. Each student on return will be expected to volunteer for either a teaching role for underprivileged students or one of CUHK’s ICARE service projects (Possibility of financial contribution being waived for needier candidates). Classes will take place in St Hilda’s College Oxford for 3 weeks during the summer term, between second and third years.

(UGED3143 is double-coded with ENGE3220.) The aim of this course is to familiarize students with the kindred relationships between film and literature as well as their essential mediumistic differences such as film and the novel, film and drama/theatre, film and poetry, etc. Their similar or different uses of time and space, and problems of adaptation will be discussed in some works which have both filmic and literary versions.

This course is structured as: (i) a series of writing workshops; and (ii) projects that facilitate the writing of poetry. While we will look at the manifestos of poets and explore debates in the field of poetics, the bulk of this course is ultimately focused on the act of writing. We will explore how one may learn from the works of canonical poets so as to hone one’s writing skills. There also will be some emphasis on exploring local and international publishing avenues, whether online or in print. There will also be sessions on how to present one’s own poems.

This course aims first to introduce students to autobiography, one of the most popular forms of writing in the contemporary world. It will raise such questions as, why has this kind of narrative been so attractive to writers in cross-cultural situations, such as Chinese-Americans? The course will focus specifically on a group of (mainly American) immigrant autobiographers who write about the experience of living between a first language and English. They raise a range of fascinating questions about language and identity. Students will be asked to reflect on these questions and on the similarities and differences between these writers’ lives and their own experience in Hong Kong. The course will aim to teach students how to approach, analyse and theorize about autobiographical narratives. Students will be given opportunity to develop their analytical skills in essay-type responses to the prescribed texts. They will also be given opportunity to develop their narrative skills in their own life-writing, using the prescribed texts as models. Both forms of written exercise are designed to extend, as well as test, students’ understanding of autobiography as a genre.

The aim of the course is to introduce students to the art of the short story. Through reading well-crafted stories, students will learn how to appreciate short fiction and become familiar with the different elements of the short story form: plot, point of view, dialogue and action, character development as well as language, voice and style. A main focus of the course will be to look at how language is used and manipulated to create meaning in the texts.

Human beings tell stories to find meaning and make sense of their lives. We are born with the need to listen to stories – and to tell them. Students who are interested in writing short stories will be able to apply the techniques discussed in class to their own work and have their stories workshopped.

This course investigates Hong Kong literature in English from the twentieth century onwards, looking at its representations of Hong Kong, its people, and its varying political and social issues. The texts in this course were published originally in English and written either by Hong Kong authors, and/or set significantly in Hong Kong. They were chosen for the importance that Hong Kong plays in them in a wide variety of ways. Set in different decades, written in different genres, and drawing on a range of themes, these works allow us to appreciate the unique vibrancy, hybridity and contradictions that comprise Hong Kong: for instance, as a rural but also urban space; as a place of restless transition but also as a permanent home; and as a place of both divide and continuity across generations and cultural groups. We will constantly move between literary and theoretical exploration and their application to real-life issues in Hong Kong, encouraging students’ sense of personal participation in constructing individual notions of what “Hong Kong” means.

This course is designed to investigate topics in creative writing not normally covered under generic creative writing courses. It may involve any one or more of the following areas in creative writing studies: literary community and global citizenship, writing for new media, creative writing and other arts, creative writing and social enterprises, phenomenology and creative writing, creative writing and research, writing speculative fiction, writing flash fiction, teaching creative writing, history of creative writing, and the writing of auto-ethnography. Students are allowed to take the above course more than once and gain the units each time they pass the course. However, students cannot take courses with the same course code more than once in a single term.

This course focuses on the art of writing about Hong Kong. Through the use of writing prompts, it introduces students to the different ways of writing about different social and physical environments in Hong Kong. Students will be able to discuss and articulate the feelings, thoughts and experiences evoked by these social and physical environments. They will be able to produce writings that evoke the sense of place that is unique to Hong Kong. They will be able to consider issues such as genre, gender and language use in relation to readership. Through active participation in class discussion and exploration of actual environments, students will acquire different perspectives and understand the diverse possibilities in relation to writing about Hong Kong. They will be able to assess their own writing and those of others.

This course will study literature that represents visual arts or, ekphrasis. The term ‘ekphrasis’ can be broadly defined as verbal representation of visual arts and has become a vibrant field of study for a few decades. We will look at some most famous ekphrastic texts from the beginning of Western literature to this day, focusing on poems evoking either actual or imaginary artworks, but branching out to ekphrasis in fiction and new media as well. In the process, we will reflect on the evolution of the term ‘ekphrasis’ from a rhetorical device to a site of rivalry and on to a mode of encounter between the verbal and visual medium. The course will explore interactions of multiple media while foregrounding characteristics of each medium.

In this course, we will read a selection of Alice Munro’s short stories and analyze them as the author’s retrospection, reconfiguration and reimagining of places, people and events in her own life. From the recasting of her mother, father and other family members in her works to the reconstruction of tales of tragedy, love and faith, Munro writes in order to open up the past, take a good look at it, feel the life, and discover the story. This idea of life as story and the power of storying lives in the construction self and identity is drawn from narrative psychology and will be used as a springboard for students to experiment with life-writing in the course. Students will be given opportunities to re-tell the stories of their own lives and/or the lives of their family and friends in ways that allow a re-interpretation of the past as well as a re-orientation of the future.

An intensive study of a major issue in literary studies. Topic(s) will be defined from year to year by the Department of English. Offerings with different subtitles can be taken up for credit, up to a maximum of two times.

This course is designed to provide students with the terminology and analytical skills necessary to describe the grammatical structure of English sentences and their parts. The grammatical concepts and categories introduced in this course are largely ‘traditional’, and common to the competing schools of linguistics.

This course introduces students to basic concepts in phonetics, the scientific study of speech, and in phonology, the study of sound patterns in various human languages with principal emphasis on the English language. Students will gain an understanding of the articulatory mechanisms for producing consonants, vowels, as well as stress and intonation. They will be introduced to the International Phonetic Alphabet, and sounds from a variety of languages. In the phonology part of the course, students will analyze the patterns governing the distribution of sounds in different languages. A major aim of this course is to enable students to transcribe English words and utterances, and to develop an appreciation of the diversity and systematicity of sound structure in human language.

(UGEC2189 is double-coded with ENGE2600.) Although English has long spread around the world, the consequences of this spread are only now beginning to be appreciated by its speakers in their many locations. The discourse of world Englishes aims to re-imagine our understanding of the English language. The difference between error and innovation can no longer be decided by reference to ‘ownership’ of the language. Additionally, the language is beginning to be a medium of the expression of identity for more and more people in very different contexts. World English must be pluralized, which is why we think in terms of world Englishes. This course is split into two sections. The first section will introduce you to issues in the discourse of world Englishes: innovation, variety, creativity, globalization, etc. The second section will look at specific case studies of Asian Englishes, such as the use of English in Singapore, China, and Japan.

This module will review and critique past and current theories of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) from a range of theoretical perspectives: linguistic, cognitive, psychological and social. It will also examine the wide range of factors which affect the outcome of SLA. It will then continue by outlining the implications for teaching and learning and how far these have an impact on approaches, methods, strategies and techniques in the classroom.

The aim of this course is to equip students with the grammatical knowledge that is essential for ESL teaching and learning. The first part of the course introduces students to key concepts involved in grammar pedagogy and teaching methodologies. The second part of the course covers grammatical forms and structures in English that may be particularly difficult for second language learners to acquire, with an emphasis on understanding the connection between form and meaning. Students apply what they have learned through conducting mini-lessons and team-teaching. At the end of the course, students should feel more confident about the use of grammar terminology in second language teaching and more knowledgeable about a task-based and discourse-oriented approach to grammar teaching in second language classrooms.

Prerequisite: ENGE 1520

This course introduces students to the study of English words and vocabulary acquisition. In the first part of the course, we will look at the evolution of the English vocabulary such as historical influences and semantic change. Then we will look at English morphology and word formation, which will be followed by topics on meaning relations and semantic fields. In the second part of the course, the focus will shift to the acquisition of vocabulary and we will start by discussing whether English has a core vocabulary and what it means to know a word. Then topics on semantic transfer, collocation, academic vocabulary and also practical techniques in vocabulary teaching will be covered.

The aim of the course is to introduce students to the basic concepts in contrastive linguistics through a comparative study of English and Chinese. The course will begin by introducing students to language transfer for a better understanding of the role of L1 in second language learning. English and Chinese will then be compared on the phonological, morphological and lexical levels. Different skills required in reading English and Chinese will also be introduced. Next, we move on to conceptual metaphors and will look at the use of metaphorical expressions in the two languages. In the lecture on contrastive pragmatics, we will explore how politeness strategies differ across cultures, with the focus on compliment response strategies. Then the major grammatical, syntactic and textual features of English and Chinese will be presented and some salient contrasts between them will be highlighted. The findings of such an English-Chinese contrastive analysis will be highly relevant to language teaching and learning as differences between the two languages are commonly reflected in errors made by second language learners.

This undergraduate course is an introduction to psycholinguistics — the study of how human beings comprehend, produce, and acquire language in vivo. This is in contrast to the more static view on language or the study of it in other areas of theoretical linguistics. One guiding question in this course is what psycho-linguistic mechanisms support the unique human capacity for language (and how they operate). We will explore this question from a multi-disciplinary perspective, combining insights and tools from cognitive psychology, linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and computer science. Topics we will cover include visual and auditory recognition of words, sentence comprehension, speech production and errors, language acquisition, neural representation of language, bilingual language processing, simultaneous interpretation, aphasia and language disorders. In this course, students will learn to design psycholinguistic experiments using experimental paradigms such as priming, self-paced reading, and language switching tasks. Other advanced methodologies (e.g. electrophysiology, eye-tracking, and fMRI technologies) will also be introduced.

This course provides an undergraduate-level overview of research methods within the field of applied linguistics. It provides students with vital skills necessary for designing, conducting, and evaluating research projects centered on language use and communication in real-world contexts, in anticipation of research endeavors like their final year or capstone projects. Participants will be introduced to research paradigms and principles tailored to applied linguistics, in addition to various research methodologies. These encompass quantitative methods like experiments and corpus-based studies, as well as qualitative approaches such as case studies and ethnographic research. The course places a particular emphasis on the practical application of these methods within the realm of applied (English) linguistics.

The course delves into an extensive array of data collection techniques commonly employed in applied linguistics research, including surveys, narrative studies, ethnographic observations, and corpus analysis. Through class activities, students will develop the skills needed to select the most suitable methods for their research questions, construct data collection instruments, and efficiently manage and analyze data sets. The course covers data analysis techniques encompassing both quantitative and qualitative methods. Students will have the opportunity to analyze quantitative data using statistical software and interpret the results, as well as to develop skills in the analysis of qualitative data, employing methods like thematic analysis and critical analysis. Several hands-on activities will be provided to encourage students to actively interact with and better grasp the concepts.

How do digital media like Instagram, TikTok, and ChatGPT shape the way we use language and construct meaning? This course examines language and discourse practices in our contemporary digital society. Drawing on concepts and insights from sociolinguistics, (critical) discourse analysis, and media studies, students will explore linguistic and discourse practices across digital media platforms and devices. The course offers a critical perspective on language and digital technology by considering the social implications of these practices. Key topics include human-technology communication, multimodal discourse through emoji and memes, the role of Gen-AI in meaningmaking, fake news and disinformation, online/offline nexus in post-digital communication, and English and linguistic diversity in digital media. The course examines both opportunities and challenges by exploring how digital media, while giving rise to new forms of expression, raise concerns about power, privacy, and inequality.

(UGEC2188 is double-coded with ENGE2530.) The objective of this course is to give students an overview of the status, features, and use of Hong Kong English (HKE), the variety of English commonly used in Hong Kong. In the first part of the course, students will be introduced to the concept of ‘world Englishes’ and examine different theoretical frameworks for conceptualizing the evolution of new varieties of English. The course then examines the history of English in Hong Kong in juxtaposition to both Cantonese and Putonghua, politically and in terms of educational policies and practices in Hong Kong. The second part of the course examines both spoken and written features of HKE, including grammar, discourse particles, vocabulary, and pronunciation, as well as the practices of code-mixing and code-switching. In the third part of the course, language attitudes and ideologies towards ‘standard’ language varieties (for example American and British English) in relation to HKE will be explored. The course will also examine the relationship between use of HKE and identity as well as gender.

This course introduces the role linguistics and linguists play in forensic science and legal investigations. Forensic linguists are like the Sherlock Holmes of language – they offer their expert opinions about linguistic evidence in the legal process. This course introduces some major topics in forensic linguistics, including authorship analysis, speaker identification, trial discourse, plagiarism and collusion, and linguistic evidence in cybercrime. High profile cases where forensic linguists have contributed to legal investigations will be discussed. Students will also be introduced the methods and tools commonly used in forensic linguistic analyses of spoken and written data. No prior knowledge of law is required.

This course serves as a general introduction to the field of sociolinguistics – the study of the relationship between language and society. Students will be introduced to basic theories, research methods, and analytical tools in sociolinguistics. They will also be given opportunities to investigate the link between language practices and social factors (e.g., ethnicity, gender, and class). Topics covered in this course include code-switching, language variation and change, language in the media, styles, identity, language attitudes, as well as language policy. Examples will be drawn from a wide range of social contexts, with a focus on the English language. Sociolinguistic topics in Hong Kong are given particular consideration.

This course aims to help students enhance their communication with people who have a different language and cultural background. Topics include the concept of culture; language and cultural socialization; cultural variations in verbal and nonverbal communication; language, identity and biases; cultural diversity in perception, values, and worldview; intercultural-intimate relationships; culture shock and intercultural adjustment/adaptation; intercultural conflict and mediation; and English in the global workplace. This course should be of interest to local and international students, and is especially appropriate for those who plan to travel, study, or work abroad.

This course is designed for students who are interested in the teaching and learning of English as a foreign/second language. The course examines different aspects of English language teaching, including the four major skill areas – reading, writing, listening, and speaking – as well as the teaching of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. In the examination of these different language areas, the course first focuses on the acquisition and development of these areas, asking the question of how learners acquire/develop vocabulary/grammar/pronunciation as well as reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills in the foreign/second language. After the learning and development of each of these skill areas has been examined, the course focuses on the teaching of each of these areas. In this discussion, the course will examine curriculum design, models, tasks, and techniques for teaching each language area.

This course introduces some major approaches as well as basic principles and tools in the analysis of texts. Concepts such as cohesion and coherence, relevance, context, and identity are drawn upon to analyze a range of discourses and text types in our contemporary society. Texts to be discussed include advertisements, news reports, interviews, political speeches, websites, book reviews, etc. The relevance of discourse analysis to foreign/second language teaching may also be considered.

This course provides an introduction to the relationship between gender and language use. Drawing from empirical and theoretical studies in sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and discourse analysis, this course addresses a range of issues. Examples of key issues include the acquisition of gender-differentiated language, gender and conversational interaction (e.g. extralinguistic constructions of gender or politeness, hedging or interruptions), sexism in language, gender images, and the relationships among language, gender, and other social constructs such as class, culture, and ethnicity.

In this course, students will delve into the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and human language. The course will primarily focus on English, while also challenging students to think critically about the relevance of the course material to their own languages or languages of interest. The course takes a multi-faceted approach, combining lectures, presentations, and hands-on activities to equip students with a solid understanding of AI fundamentals. As the course progresses, students will explore how computers process and generate human language, as well as how AI can be used to analyze language data. Ultimately, they will critically evaluate various AI-based techniques, while applying them to investigate key questions about human language. The course curriculum includes modules on language and computers, learner corpora, text preprocessing, speech-to-text, data visualization, and more.

This objective of this course is to (a) provide an overview of a variety of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, (b) enable students to evaluate AI technologies, and (c) facilitate students to apply AI technologies to identify key problems in their major field (e.g., business, education, philosophy, social science) and/or explore potential solutions for those problems. It incorporates a hybrid approach combining lecture segments and hands-on activities so that students are able to have a better understanding of what AI is and how AI technologies have been used for diverse purposes. The first part of the course focuses on exploring a variety of applications (and programming codes in Python) for image creation, text mining, web crawling, modelling, speech recognition, conversation, etc. In the second part, students work on developing a website where they introduce and discuss the problems and solutions of their interest, which are explored using AI technologies.

Over the past few decades, second/foreign language teaching has evolved from a pre-occupation with methods of teaching to a broader perspective of teaching and learning. Within this wider perspective, it is important that teachers not only concern themselves with how they teach, i.e. the methods/approaches and techniques they use, but also develop an understanding of how learners learn, i.e. the processes of learning. Hence, this course particularly focusses on a number of individual difference variables (e.g., personality, motivation, language aptitude, learning styles, and language learning strategies) that affect individuals’ ultimate level of language achievement.

Using language is one of the most creative and distinctive activities that makes us human. We are aware of this creativity when we read imaginative literature, but we also experience it directly in our own everyday language use. This course offers both a linguistic and literary perspective on the various ways in which language influences and shapes such things as, our identity, our emotions, our sense of humour, our experience of technology, and our membership to society. Students learn to analyse and appreciate a range of linguistic, literary and cultural phenomena, including works from the traditional genres of fiction, poetry and drama, as well as other media such as, film, song, and art. From a linguistic perspective, we examine the ways in which language is structured and used creatively for different purposes in both local and global contexts. From a literary perspective, we examine how the creative use of language in literary works is part of how we construct the world and make sense of our place in it. By focusing on different text and media from different times and places, this course aims to foster new under-standings of how language is a powerful tool in shaping our capacities to reflect on our own world and to imagine other worlds beyond it.

This course provides you with the communication skills necessary to perform various academic and non-academic tasks in both online and offline contexts. It demonstrates how differences in audience, communicative purpose and medium shape the content and structure of various written and spoken genres. It also discusses different patterns of development such as narration, description, exemplification, and persuasion, and the importance of thesis statements and topic sentences in organizing ideas. To help you develop an awareness of the structural and stylistic differences of various genres, you will produce a personal reflective essay, a literary analysis paper, and a persuasive presentation, that will be presented in various print, face-to-face and digital formats, using both linguistic and multimodal resources. Through a process oriented approach, you will be producing outlines and drafts of these writing tasks, get feedback, and learn writing strategies such as using sensory details, choosing active, specific verbs, and employing cohesive devices. Recognizing how technology shapes communication practices in diverse ways, this course also draws attention to the affordances and constraints of digital tools such as WordPress, Blackboard, Zoom, and social media platforms.

This course builds on the foundational communication skills introduced in ENGE 1310 and helps you develop the competencies necessary to conduct effective research. It examines the existing structures and conventions of various print and digital genres such as journal articles, blogs, infographics, and YouTube videos. It also discusses different patterns of development such as definition, problem/ solution, comparison/ contrast, classification and division, and the importance of maintaining an appropriate register and style. To help you produce and consume knowledge in creative and critical ways, you will construct an abstract, an annotated bibliography, a literature review, a video, and a research article that discusses an issue in applied linguistics. These texts will be constructed for real world audiences and will involve the use of various multimodal resources. Through a process-oriented approach, you will be producing outlines and drafts of these writing tasks, get feedback, and learn writing strategies such as signposting, using signal phrases, and constructing parallel structures. Recognizing the increasing importance of technology in producing and consuming knowledge, this course also discusses the use of various digital tools such as search engines, reference management software, blogging and video editing platforms.

This course offers an overview of the linguistic structure of English. We systematically study the English language and human language in general at various levels: words, phrases, sentences and beyond. It also provides students with the opportunity to observe and explain the ways in which English is used in everyday life.

This course is designed to provide students with the terminology and analytical skills necessary to describe the grammatical structure of English sentences and their parts. The grammatical concepts and categories introduced in this course are largely ‘traditional’, and common to the competing schools of linguistics.

This course will introduce students to methods of reading literary texts from the major genres of fiction, poetry, and drama. It will illustrate basic literary terms and concepts, and closely study a variety of literary texts written in different times and countries. The emphasis will be on close reading, analysing how the meaning of a literary text is informed by its formal elements and literary conventions. At the same time, the course will also give students an awareness of the interaction between text and context, creative writing and critical reception, and the inheritance and transformation of literary tradition.

Students will study short plays and excerpts from longer plays, workshop them in small groups, with the aim of performing pieces of similar length before an audience. Students will be taught how to interpret a play from a dramaturgical point of view, and be equipped with the fundamental techniques of voice production, creating a character, directing, and interpreting a text for performance.

What is a hero? The stories we read, as well as the movies and television programmes we watch are full of heroism, but do we really know what a hero is? Does a hero have to be good? Do they have to be strong? Do they have to win in the end? Do we have to like them? This course will address many of these questions in relation to many different texts from a wide variety of media: from one of the earliest surviving texts of the ancient world, The Epic of Gilgamesh to the recent global phenomenon, Game of Thrones. We will look especially at the way heroes are shaped by the monsters that they do battle against. Some monsters are fought with fists and swords, but others must be defeated through other means for they lie within the hero himself.

(UGED2195 is double-coded with ENGE2110.) This course takes a closer look at the genre of crime fiction. The course outlines a broad perspective of the genre of crime fiction from its earliest incarnations to modern-day TV drama. We will explore a variety of different forms of crime fiction, and how the genre more generally reflects cultural, historical and social issues. The study material for this course will consist of literary texts, TV series, and films drawn from the popular cultural canon. Topics we will discuss include conspiracy, serial crime, trauma, the epistemology of clues, history and crime, and the criminal mind. The course begins with a historical overview of detective fiction, and concludes with a creative workshop on how to write a detective story. Students with a taste for murder, crime, and suspense — and above all the desire to solve enigmas and mysteries — are welcome to attend this course.

(UGED2186 is double-coded with ENGE2130.) Why read literature? This course offers a broad look through literary history to understand the enduring value and diversity of literature. For each lecture, we will look at a literary masterpiece — from antiquity to the present — and address three main issues: A) the work and its historical context; B) how to read it; and C) themes that make the work relevant in contemporary society and in our everyday lives. The course is designed as an introductory survey of literary works that have had a major impact throughout the ages. Issue A) is intended to give students a sense of the work’s impact in its own time; B) is designed to provide students with the conceptual tools and methodologies to understand a classic work of literature; while C) will provide students with an opportunity to make connections between their own individual concerns and those of the great characters of literature. At the end of the course, students will have encountered some of the most esteemed classics in literary history. No previous studies in literature needed to take this course. Students interested in discussing the ideas, ideals and values of classic literary texts are welcome to attend this course.

(UGED2187 is double-coded with ENGE2140.) What’s a hero? What’s a superhero? Why and when do we need superheroes? How to be one and who gets to be one? We will begin by tracing the origins of this enduring pop fiction, from the hero’s journey in antiquity to the outbreak of the Second World War. We will also explore the moral ambiguity and mixed values of some of the most memorable characters. Furthermore, we will examine revisionist approaches to the superhero genre that respond to the hopes and disillusionments of the contemporary era. Topics covered will include good and evil, power and identity, and justice and responsibility. You may also have the chance to design your own superheroes. It is hoped that by the end of the course, you will develop new ways of reading superhero narratives as uniquely modern myths.

This course studies the relationship between words on the page and audio-visual moving images on the screen by focusing on the adaptations of classic English novels of the nineteenth century. We will look at several nineteenth-century English authors who have been particularly popular with screen adaptations: Austen, Dickens, and Hardy. By close reading of their texts and careful viewing of the big and small screen adaptations of these novels, we will consider the specificity of the textual and the visual media in the narrative, thematic, and aesthetic aspects. The course will explore the interaction between literature and film/television in terms of forms and stylistics, and make broader cultural and historical enquiries about the issues of gender, class, nationhood, and nature that will illuminate nineteenth-century literature in general and its relevance to the present.

Focusing on song writers and performers from the USA, this course introduces students to the art of the popular song lyric of the twentieth century. In the process of studying American popular song lyrics, students will learn about such musical genres as “the blues,” “gospel,” “tin pan alley,” “folk,” “country,” and “rock and roll” as well as the elements of American history that give rise to each of these types of musical lyric. Since one of the course elements is the relationship of musical lyric to musical sound, we will spend considerable class time listening to popular songs , paying attention to the way a lyric’s meaning is conveyed through such elements as vocal style and musical arrangement.

(UGED2197 is double-coded with ENGE2190.) The course will consider myths and legends from around the world with particular sensitivity to one peculiar aspect of them: that the gods depicted in them often behave no better than the people whose lives they determine. In order to explain why this is the case, the course will seek to understand the nature and function of myth, and the complex uses to which they are put in order to explain some of our most pressing questions: How did we all begin? Where are we? Who are we? Why is there so much wrong with the world? What’s the solution? Where will we go when we die? How will it all end? Although the concept of myth might seem outdated in modern secular culture, by drawing comparisons between the ancient and contemporary worlds, students will be encouraged to see how myth-making of some kind is as inevitable and innately human as the questions which prompt it. The course will begin by establishing some archetypal similarities between myths – from myths of Creation to myths of Apocalypse – and then consider myths from specific cultures – including Greco-Roman, Scandinavian, and Chinese – before considering the appeal of myth in contemporary popular culture, especially The Lord of Rings, and Game of Thrones.

This course takes a closer look at the intimate connections between song and poetry. The history of song has always been closely connected with the oral tradition in literature; conversely, the musicality of literature owes much to the song tradition. Gospel, Negro Spirituals, Folk Music, the Bard Tradition, the Sean Nós tradition, the ballad and the lyric form in poetry, as well as popular music and musicals will all be examined on this course. The course will examine the different song traditions in their social and political contexts. The course will also include a song-writing element. There will be a song-writing workshop with a well-known local songwriter. Students will be asked to write a song in any genre of their choice (folk song, protest song, spiritual song etc.) and then to have that song performed either by themselves or someone else in the class. No previous studies in literature or music are needed to take this course. Students interested in exploring the connections between song and poetry and between song-writing and the poetic craft are welcome to attend this course.

This course looks at the close relationship between existentialist philosophy and literature. Existentialism is a philosophical movement that focuses on human existence and the challenges of choice, freedom, and responsibility in the modern world. We will explore a variety of existentialist positions—including those of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, and de Beauvoir—to understand how existentialist thought constitutes an important intellectual context for many themes in modern literature, including authenticity, alienation, and anxiety. Authors to be discussed include Kafka, Dostoevsky, Ionesco, Camus, Beckett and others. Students interested in literary representations of the existential challenges of the human condition are welcome to attend this course.

The first half of this course will focus on representative European and American plays of the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries and trace their significance in the development of modern and contemporary drama. The second half of the course will explore twenty-first century plays and their relationship to some of the most pressing questions of the contemporary period. As students become familiar with the major styles, concepts, and figures of modern and contemporary drama, they will also develop an awareness of the historical contexts from which the plays emerge and the social and cultural issues to which they respond. Finally, students will investigate drama as both a written text and a performance event and, through their readings, discussions, and assignments, gain an appreciation of its uniqueness as a “living” art form. The course readings will include plays by the following authors: Henrik Ibsen, Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Miller, Samuel Beckett, Caryl Churchill, Ayad Akhtar, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, and Lynn Nottage.

(UGED2194 is double-coded with ENGE2360.) This course provides a framework for understanding the themes and motifs of children’s literature. It also looks at representations of children in literature. We will analyse some essential, central texts as well as contemporary popular books for children. The uses of fantasy and the educational aspects of books for children will be discussed, along with notions of childhood and adulthood. Through close reading of set texts, students will be able to engage in critical techniques applicable to most literature. This is because the best texts for children satisfy sensitive adult readers too.

This course examines some of the key works of dystopian fiction written in the twentieth-century. It does so by thinking about the ways in which the book – that common symbol of culture and civilization – is treated in these works. The course begins by contextualizing the notion of dystopia and its cognates. After revealing a strong link between the dystopian image and the emasculation of culture, we move on to consider the particular visions of society presented by Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, and Anthony Burgess. As we shall see, they are visions of society that insist that we not only question our idea of “culture” but also how culture itself intervenes in the inevitable tension between state and individual.

This course provides an introduction to the art of reading poetry. We will read and analyze a range of poems of diverse styles and forms from the Renaissance to the present day so as to stimulate students’ creative and critical responses to poetry. We will also read and analyze contemporary poetry written in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. While this is not a course on creative writing, it nonetheless explores, among other topics, the role of the imagination, the act of writing, the purposes of poetry, the notions of tradition and of the individual talent, for these are issues with which poets engage, whether directly or indirectly, in their poems.

This course introduces students to basic concepts in phonetics, the scientific study of speech, and in phonology, the study of sound patterns in various human languages with principal emphasis on the English language. Students will gain an understanding of the articulatory mechanisms for producing consonants, vowels, as well as stress and intonation. They will be introduced to the International Phonetic Alphabet, and sounds from a variety of languages. In the phonology part of the course, students will analyze the patterns governing the distribution of sounds in different languages. A major aim of this course is to enable students to transcribe English words and utterances, and to develop an appreciation of the diversity and systematicity of sound structure in human language.

(UGEC2188 is double-coded with ENGE2530.) The objective of this course is to give students an overview of the status, features, and use of Hong Kong English (HKE), the variety of English commonly used in Hong Kong. In the first part of the course, students will be introduced to the concept of ‘world Englishes’ and examine different theoretical frameworks for conceptualizing the evolution of new varieties of English. The course then examines the history of English in Hong Kong in juxtaposition to both Cantonese and Putonghua, politically and in terms of educational policies and practices in Hong Kong. The second part of the course examines both spoken and written features of HKE, including grammar, discourse particles, vocabulary, and pronunciation, as well as the practices of code-mixing and code-switching. In the third part of the course, language attitudes and ideologies towards ‘standard’ language varieties (for example American and British English) in relation to HKE will be explored. The course will also examine the relationship between use of HKE and identity as well as gender.

This course introduces the role linguistics and linguists play in forensic science and legal investigations. Forensic linguists are like the Sherlock Holmes of language – they offer their expert opinions about linguistic evidence in the legal process. This course introduces some major topics in forensic linguistics, including authorship analysis, speaker identification, trial discourse, plagiarism and collusion, and linguistic evidence in cybercrime. High profile cases where forensic linguists have contributed to legal investigations will be discussed. Students will also be introduced the methods and tools commonly used in forensic linguistic analyses of spoken and written data. No prior knowledge of law is required.

(UGEC2189 is double-coded with ENGE2600.) Although English has long spread around the world, the consequences of this spread are only now beginning to be appreciated by its speakers in their many locations. The discourse of world Englishes aims to re-imagine our understanding of the English language. The difference between error and innovation can no longer be decided by reference to ‘ownership’ of the language. Additionally, the language is beginning to be a medium of the expression of identity for more and more people in very different contexts. World English must be pluralized, which is why we think in terms of world Englishes. This course is split into two sections. The first section will introduce you to issues in the discourse of world Englishes: innovation, variety, creativity, globalization, etc. The second section will look at specific case studies of Asian Englishes, such as the use of English in Singapore, China, and Japan.

This module will review and critique past and current theories of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) from a range of theoretical perspectives: linguistic, cognitive, psychological and social. It will also examine the wide range of factors which affect the outcome of SLA. It will then continue by outlining the implications for teaching and learning and how far these have an impact on approaches, methods, strategies and techniques in the classroom.

This course serves as a general introduction to the field of sociolinguistics – the study of the relationship between language and society. Students will be introduced to basic theories, research methods, and analytical tools in sociolinguistics. They will also be given opportunities to investigate the link between language practices and social factors (e.g., ethnicity, gender, and class). Topics covered in this course include code-switching, language variation and change, language in the media, styles, identity, language attitudes, as well as language policy. Examples will be drawn from a wide range of social contexts, with a focus on the English language. Sociolinguistic topics in Hong Kong are given particular consideration.

Students will study short plays and excerpts from longer plays, workshop them in small groups, with the aim of performing pieces of similar length before an audience. Students will be taught how to interpret a play from a dramaturgical point of view, and be equipped with the fundamental techniques of voice production, creating a character, directing, and interpreting a text for performance. The specific focus of this course will be comedy.

This course aims to help students enhance their communication with people who have a different language and cultural background. Topics include the concept of culture; language and cultural socialization; cultural variations in verbal and nonverbal communication; language, identity and biases; cultural diversity in perception, values, and worldview; intercultural-intimate relationships; culture shock and intercultural adjustment/adaptation; intercultural conflict and mediation; and English in the global workplace. This course should be of interest to local and international students, and is especially appropriate for those who plan to travel, study, or work abroad.

The aim of this course is to equip students with the grammatical knowledge that is essential for ESL teaching and learning. The first part of the course introduces students to key concepts involved in grammar pedagogy and teaching methodologies. The second part of the course covers grammatical forms and structures in English that may be particularly difficult for second language learners to acquire, with an emphasis on understanding the connection between form and meaning. Students apply what they have learned through conducting mini-lessons and team-teaching. At the end of the course, students should feel more confident about the use of grammar terminology in second language teaching and more knowledgeable about a task-based and discourse-oriented approach to grammar teaching in second language classrooms.

Prerequisite: ENGE 1520

This course introduces students to the study of English words and vocabulary acquisition. In the first part of the course, we will look at the evolution of the English vocabulary such as historical influences and semantic change. Then we will look at English morphology and word formation, which will be followed by topics on meaning relations and semantic fields. In the second part of the course, the focus will shift to the acquisition of vocabulary and we will start by discussing whether English has a core vocabulary and what it means to know a word. Then topics on semantic transfer, collocation, academic vocabulary and also practical techniques in vocabulary teaching will be covered.

Students will be selected by a panel of senior staff based on achievement in relevant Department courses and willingness and likely capacity to benefit. Classes will be divided in two strands: “Literature, Linguistics and Society”; “Current Affairs: Britain and the World”. Oxford tutors will conduct 4 hours’ face-to-face teaching a day for 5 days a week. Students will spend some evenings and weekend days in excursions to London and Stratford for plays and other cultural sites. Fieldwork and cultural explorations will be closely supervised by College nominees and/or Department staff. Full reflective essays and diary-plus-video are required of all participants for presentation within CUHK at their own college presentation evenings, and to other English Department majors at university orientation events. Each student on return will be expected to volunteer for either a teaching role for underprivileged students or one of CUHK’s ICARE service projects (Possibility of financial contribution being waived for needier candidates). Classes will take place in St Hilda’s College Oxford for 3 weeks during the summer term, between second and third years.

The aim of the course is to build on the skills that students acquired in previous communication courses and to further enhance their writing and speaking competence in preparation for more advanced major courses and also the future workplace. Using a short novel as the basis for three written assignments, students will practice how to summarize, interpret and analyze literary texts. Feedback from peers and teachers will enable students to identify areas for improvement and polish their writing skills. Next, the course will provide guidance to students for writing their cover letters and resumes with the purpose of highlighting their strengths, accomplishments and aspirations. In the last past of the course, we will discuss how to prepare for job interviews and conduct practice to hone students’ oral self-presentation skills. It is hoped that by the end of the course, students can become competent and confident users of English across a variety of contexts and requirements.

The course will involve an in-depth study of Romanticism and evaluate its significance in English poetic tradition. It will cover the six major Romantic poets, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats, and from some characteristics they share, outline the ‘sprit’ of their age. At the same time, the course will also emphasise the distinctiveness of each Romantic poet, to demonstrate the complexity and diversity contained in the term ‘Romanticism’. We will study the representative poems of each poet carefully in relation to his aesthetic ideas and life experience. The course will emphasise close reading, but it will also draw attention to the relationship between text and context, poetry and poet, poetic creation and critical value.

(UGED3143 is double-coded with ENGE3220.) The aim of this course is to familiarize students with the kindred relationships between film and literature as well as their essential mediumistic differences such as film and the novel, film and drama/theatre, film and poetry, etc. Their similar or different uses of time and space, and problems of adaptation will be discussed in some works which have both filmic and literary versions.

This course is structured as: (i) a series of writing workshops; and (ii) projects that facilitate the writing of poetry. While we will look at the manifestos of poets and explore debates in the field of poetics, the bulk of this course is ultimately focused on the act of writing. We will explore how one may learn from the works of canonical poets so as to hone one’s writing skills. There also will be some emphasis on exploring local and international publishing avenues, whether online or in print. There will also be sessions on how to present one’s own poems.

This course aims first to introduce students to autobiography, one of the most popular forms of writing in the contemporary world. It will raise such questions as, why has this kind of narrative been so attractive to writers in cross-cultural situations, such as Chinese-Americans? The course will focus specifically on a group of (mainly American) immigrant autobiographers who write about the experience of living between a first language and English. They raise a range of fascinating questions about language and identity. Students will be asked to reflect on these questions and on the similarities and differences between these writers’ lives and their own experience in Hong Kong. The course will aim to teach students how to approach, analyse and theorize about autobiographical narratives. Students will be given opportunity to develop their analytical skills in essay-type responses to the prescribed texts. They will also be given opportunity to develop their narrative skills in their own life-writing, using the prescribed texts as models. Both forms of written exercise are designed to extend, as well as test, students’ understanding of autobiography as a genre.

The aim of the course is to introduce students to the art of the short story. Through reading well-crafted stories, students will learn how to appreciate short fiction and become familiar with the different elements of the short story form: plot, point of view, dialogue and action, character development as well as language, voice and style. A main focus of the course will be to look at how language is used and manipulated to create meaning in the texts.

Human beings tell stories to find meaning and make sense of their lives. We are born with the need to listen to stories – and to tell them. Students who are interested in writing short stories will be able to apply the techniques discussed in class to their own work and have their stories workshopped.

This course investigates Hong Kong literature in English from the twentieth century onwards, looking at its representations of Hong Kong, its people, and its varying political and social issues. The texts in this course were published originally in English and written either by Hong Kong authors, and/or set significantly in Hong Kong. They were chosen for the importance that Hong Kong plays in them in a wide variety of ways. Set in different decades, written in different genres, and drawing on a range of themes, these works allow us to appreciate the unique vibrancy, hybridity and contradictions that comprise Hong Kong: for instance, as a rural but also urban space; as a place of restless transition but also as a permanent home; and as a place of both divide and continuity across generations and cultural groups. We will constantly move between literary and theoretical exploration and their application to real-life issues in Hong Kong, encouraging students’ sense of personal participation in constructing individual notions of what “Hong Kong” means.

This course is designed to investigate topics in creative writing not normally covered under generic creative writing courses. It may involve any one or more of the following areas in creative writing studies: literary community and global citizenship, writing for new media, creative writing and other arts, creative writing and social enterprises, phenomenology and creative writing, creative writing and research, writing speculative fiction, writing flash fiction, teaching creative writing, history of creative writing, and the writing of auto-ethnography. Students are allowed to take the above course more than once and gain the units each time they pass the course. However, students cannot take courses with the same course code more than once in a single term.

This course focuses on the art of writing about Hong Kong. Through the use of writing prompts, it introduces students to the different ways of writing about different social and physical environments in Hong Kong. Students will be able to discuss and articulate the feelings, thoughts and experiences evoked by these social and physical environments. They will be able to produce writings that evoke the sense of place that is unique to Hong Kong. They will be able to consider issues such as genre, gender and language use in relation to readership. Through active participation in class discussion and exploration of actual environments, students will acquire different perspectives and understand the diverse possibilities in relation to writing about Hong Kong. They will be able to assess their own writing and those of others.

This course will study literature that represents visual arts or, ekphrasis. The term ‘ekphrasis’ can be broadly defined as verbal representation of visual arts and has become a vibrant field of study for a few decades. We will look at some most famous ekphrastic texts from the beginning of Western literature to this day, focusing on poems evoking either actual or imaginary artworks, but branching out to ekphrasis in fiction and new media as well. In the process, we will reflect on the evolution of the term ‘ekphrasis’ from a rhetorical device to a site of rivalry and on to a mode of encounter between the verbal and visual medium. The course will explore interactions of multiple media while foregrounding characteristics of each medium.

In this course, we will read a selection of Alice Munro’s short stories and analyze them as the author’s retrospection, reconfiguration and reimagining of places, people and events in her own life. From the recasting of her mother, father and other family members in her works to the reconstruction of tales of tragedy, love and faith, Munro writes in order to open up the past, take a good look at it, feel the life, and discover the story. This idea of life as story and the power of storying lives in the construction self and identity is drawn from narrative psychology and will be used as a springboard for students to experiment with life-writing in the course. Students will be given opportunities to re-tell the stories of their own lives and/or the lives of their family and friends in ways that allow a re-interpretation of the past as well as a re-orientation of the future.

This course introduces students to the playwright William Shakespeare. By reading a number of Shakespeare’s plays, drawn from the genres of comedy, history, tragedy and romance, students will achieve an understanding of Shakespeare’s language, his modes of characterization, his methods of creating dramatic situations, and his representative themes. Students will also study the relationship of Shakespeare’s scripts to their original Elizabethan and Jacobean performance contexts. Time permitting, attention will also be given to the performance history of Shakespearean drama and the continuing importance of that drama in twentieth-first century world theatre.

The aim of the course is to introduce students to the basic concepts in contrastive linguistics through a comparative study of English and Chinese. The course will begin by introducing students to language transfer for a better understanding of the role of L1 in second language learning. English and Chinese will then be compared on the phonological, morphological and lexical levels. Different skills required in reading English and Chinese will also be introduced. Next, we move on to conceptual metaphors and will look at the use of metaphorical expressions in the two languages. In the lecture on contrastive pragmatics, we will explore how politeness strategies differ across cultures, with the focus on compliment response strategies. Then the major grammatical, syntactic and textual features of English and Chinese will be presented and some salient contrasts between them will be highlighted. The findings of such an English-Chinese contrastive analysis will be highly relevant to language teaching and learning as differences between the two languages are commonly reflected in errors made by second language learners.

This undergraduate course is an introduction to psycholinguistics — the study of how human beings comprehend, produce, and acquire language in vivo. This is in contrast to the more static view on language or the study of it in other areas of theoretical linguistics. One guiding question in this course is what psycho-linguistic mechanisms support the unique human capacity for language (and how they operate). We will explore this question from a multi-disciplinary perspective, combining insights and tools from cognitive psychology, linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and computer science. Topics we will cover include visual and auditory recognition of words, sentence comprehension, speech production and errors, language acquisition, neural representation of language, bilingual language processing, simultaneous interpretation, aphasia and language disorders. In this course, students will learn to design psycholinguistic experiments using experimental paradigms such as priming, self-paced reading, and language switching tasks. Other advanced methodologies (e.g. electrophysiology, eye-tracking, and fMRI technologies) will also be introduced.

This course is designed for students who are interested in the teaching and learning of English as a foreign/second language. The course examines different aspects of English language teaching, including the four major skill areas – reading, writing, listening, and speaking – as well as the teaching of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. In the examination of these different language areas, the course first focuses on the acquisition and development of these areas, asking the question of how learners acquire/develop vocabulary/grammar/pronunciation as well as reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills in the foreign/second language. After the learning and development of each of these skill areas has been examined, the course focuses on the teaching of each of these areas. In this discussion, the course will examine curriculum design, models, tasks, and techniques for teaching each language area.

This course introduces some major approaches as well as basic principles and tools in the analysis of texts. Concepts such as cohesion and coherence, relevance, context, and identity are drawn upon to analyze a range of discourses and text types in our contemporary society. Texts to be discussed include advertisements, news reports, interviews, political speeches, websites, book reviews, etc. The relevance of discourse analysis to foreign/second language teaching may also be considered.

This course provides an introduction to the relationship between gender and language use. Drawing from empirical and theoretical studies in sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and discourse analysis, this course addresses a range of issues. Examples of key issues include the acquisition of gender-differentiated language, gender and conversational interaction (e.g. extralinguistic constructions of gender or politeness, hedging or interruptions), sexism in language, gender images, and the relationships among language, gender, and other social constructs such as class, culture, and ethnicity.

This course provides an undergraduate-level overview of research methods within the field of applied linguistics. It provides students with vital skills necessary for designing, conducting, and evaluating research projects centered on language use and communication in real-world contexts, in anticipation of research endeavors like their final year or capstone projects. Participants will be introduced to research paradigms and principles tailored to applied linguistics, in addition to various research methodologies. These encompass quantitative methods like experiments and corpus-based studies, as well as qualitative approaches such as case studies and ethnographic research. The course places a particular emphasis on the practical application of these methods within the realm of applied (English) linguistics.

The course delves into an extensive array of data collection techniques commonly employed in applied linguistics research, including surveys, narrative studies, ethnographic observations, and corpus analysis. Through class activities, students will develop the skills needed to select the most suitable methods for their research questions, construct data collection instruments, and efficiently manage and analyze data sets. The course covers data analysis techniques encompassing both quantitative and qualitative methods. Students will have the opportunity to analyze quantitative data using statistical software and interpret the results, as well as to develop skills in the analysis of qualitative data, employing methods like thematic analysis and critical analysis. Several hands-on activities will be provided to encourage students to actively interact with and better grasp the concepts.

This internship course is designed to bridge students’ academic studies with real-world professional experience, offering a unique opportunity to apply classroom knowledge in a practical work environment. By integrating academic theories, practices, and skills with workplace applications, students will gain hands-on experience and deepen their understanding of how English is used in professional settings.
Students are required to complete a minimum of 200 hours of full-time or part-time work at either local or international organizations where English is used for internal and external communication. While the department provides a range of pre-approved host organizations, students may also propose self-found internships, subject to the approval of the course leader.
To prepare for the recruitment process, students must attend all the workshops organized by Course leader and two mandatory workshops from the Career Planning and Development (CPDC) from the Office of Student Affairs, CUHK. This course ultimately fosters critical reflection on the relevance and effectiveness of classroom learning in professional contexts, equipping students with valuable skills for their future careers.

In this course, students will delve into the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and human language. The course will primarily focus on English, while also challenging students to think critically about the relevance of the course material to their own languages or languages of interest. The course takes a multi-faceted approach, combining lectures, presentations, and hands-on activities to equip students with a solid understanding of AI fundamentals. As the course progresses, students will explore how computers process and generate human language, as well as how AI can be used to analyze language data. Ultimately, they will critically evaluate various AI-based techniques, while applying them to investigate key questions about human language. The course curriculum includes modules on language and computers, learner corpora, text preprocessing, speech-to-text, data visualization, and more.

This objective of this course is to (a) provide an overview of a variety of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, (b) enable students to evaluate AI technologies, and (c) facilitate students to apply AI technologies to identify key problems in their major field (e.g., business, education, philosophy, social science) and/or explore potential solutions for those problems. It incorporates a hybrid approach combining lecture segments and hands-on activities so that students are able to have a better understanding of what AI is and how AI technologies have been used for diverse purposes. The first part of the course focuses on exploring a variety of applications (and programming codes in Python) for image creation, text mining, web crawling, modelling, speech recognition, conversation, etc. In the second part, students work on developing a website where they introduce and discuss the problems and solutions of their interest, which are explored using AI technologies.

How do digital media like Instagram, TikTok, and ChatGPT shape the way we use language and construct meaning? This course examines language and discourse practices in our contemporary digital society. Drawing on concepts and insights from sociolinguistics, (critical) discourse analysis, and media studies, students will explore linguistic and discourse practices across digital media platforms and devices. The course offers a critical perspective on language and digital technology by considering the social implications of these practices. Key topics include human-technology communication, multimodal discourse through emoji and memes, the role of Gen-AI in meaningmaking, fake news and disinformation, online/offline nexus in post-digital communication, and English and linguistic diversity in digital media. The course examines both opportunities and challenges by exploring how digital media, while giving rise to new forms of expression, raise concerns about power, privacy, and inequality.

An intensive study of a major issue in literary studies. Topic(s) will be defined from year to year by the Department of English. Offerings with different subtitles can be taken up for credit, up to a maximum of two times.

Over the past few decades, second/foreign language teaching has evolved from a pre-occupation with methods of teaching to a broader perspective of teaching and learning. Within this wider perspective, it is important that teachers not only concern themselves with how they teach, i.e. the methods/approaches and techniques they use, but also develop an understanding of how learners learn, i.e. the processes of learning. Hence, this course particularly focusses on a number of individual difference variables (e.g., personality, motivation, language aptitude, learning styles, and language learning strategies) that affect individuals’ ultimate level of language achievement.

In this capstone course, English majors in their final year of studies will carry out independent research on a topic approved by the Department and supervised by a teacher. It may involve a major essay (15-20 pages) in literature or linguistics, or it may be interdisciplinary. It may also take the form of a project or creative work such as a collection of poetry or short stories. The major paper/project must include critical reflection on the research process, build on undergraduate learning in the major, and make connections with future studies/career plans. The proposal for this course must be submitted to the Department before the term begins. At the end of the semester, all students taking ENGE 4700 will give an oral presentation and be evaluated by a panel of teachers and peers. This is a required course for all four-year students who have joined the Department of English during or after the 2012-2013 academic year.

ENGE4701 is the first in a two-part capstone series for final-year English majors, designed to support students as they embark on independent research projects. The research may involve a major essay in literature or linguistics, or it may be interdisciplinary. It may also take the form of a project or creative work such as a collection of poetry or short stories. The major paper/project must include critical reflection on the research process, build on undergraduate learning in the major, and make connections with future studies/career plans. Under the guidance of a faculty supervisor and with approval from the Department, students will develop comprehensive project plans and participate in peer-led discussions sharing initial proposals, pilot studies, material from developing literature reviews, and/or preliminary drafts of creative work. This preparatory phase emphasizes critical reflection and requires students to integrate their undergraduate learning while establishing connections to future academic or career goals. The course culminates in an assessed project outline, forming the foundation for continued development in ENGE 4702. Completion of ENGE 4701 and 4702 is mandatory for all English majors entering the program in the 2025-2026 academic year or later.

ENGE 4702 is the second course in the capstone series for final-year English majors, building on the preparatory work completed in ENGE 4701. This course guides students through the intermediate and final stages of their independent research projects, under the supervision of a faculty member. The research may involve a major essay in literature or linguistics, or it may be interdisciplinary. It may also take the form of a project or creative work such as a collection of poetry or short stories. The major paper/project must include critical reflection on the research process, build on undergraduate learning in the major, and make connections with future studies/career plans. At the end of the semester, all students enrolled in ENGE 4702 will deliver an oral presentation to an audience of their peers and a panel of instructors, with the evaluation conducted by the instructors. Completion of ENGE 4701 and 4702 is mandatory for all English majors entering the program in the 2025-2026 academic year or later.