CAES Annual Report 2019-2020

3 2 (i) sentence structure, (ii) critical reading and (iii) formality in academic writing. CAES now offers seven SPOCs to students year-round. CAES has developed a new credit-bearing, six-credit elective course called Online Digital Storytelling in English. In the first half of the course, students learn the skills of digital online storytelling and in the second half, they offer these online digital storytellingworkshops to students inMyanmar.This innovative course hones students’ digital and visual literacy skills, develops their spoken communication skills, enhances their ability to engage with others in culturally diverse environments and promotes cross-cultural engagement. CAES has also continued to contribute to the university-wide Communication-intensive Courses (CiC) initiative, alongside the Centre for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning and the Common Core Curriculum. CiC courses aim to bolster undergraduate students’ communication knowledge, skillsandattributesbydevelopingand/ or recognizing courses that provide HKU students with the core communicative competencies needed for creative, economic and social success on campus and in the workplace upon graduation. Within the project, CAES teachers help faculty members develop materials and assessment instruments to teach and then assess their students’ communication skills alongside the learning of disciplinary knowledge. CAES has helped to badge 47 courses this academic year across the university curriculum. Even with the significant disruption to face-to-face teaching in the 2019-2020 academic year, CAES has taught academic literacy development courses to 8,115 undergraduate and postgraduate students. We have seen 30 students graduate from our Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics programme, seven with distinctions. Enhancing the academic writing, speaking, reading and listening skills of undergraduate and postgraduate students is the cornerstone of thework that we do at theUniversity of Hong Kong. This ensures that students have every chance of succeeding in their studies in an English-medium university. Dr. Miranda LEGG Interim Director August 2020 Introduction Vision Primary Mission CAES Work Professional Development Research and Publications Conference, Seminar and Other Presentations Committees Staff List 02 04 05 08 19 20 22 23 25 Contents Introduction The2019-2020academicyearhasbeenachallenging one for the Centre for Applied English Studies (CAES) as it has for the whole academic sector. Due to the disruption to face-to-face teaching in the face of political protests and the COVID-19 pandemic, CAES has made necessary adaptations quickly and effectively. Much of this year has been spent honing and sharing the skills needed to deliver effective online teaching.We were very pleased to see that average student satisfaction scores for our 32 credit-bearing undergraduate courses across the year have been some of the highest we have ever received. This is a testament to CAES teachers’ and coordinators’ hard work and professional commitment. Much of the CAES professional development work this year has focused on developing pedagogical practices to support synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning through CAES’ professional development sessions and the Continuing Professional Development HUB with teachers from the other language centres in Hong Kong. Alongside this, CAES has continued to develop the language support services we offer to UGC- funded students. Our Communication Support Services (CSS) have continued to grow in all of the four units – the Digital Literacy Lab, General Language Advising, the Speaking Studio and the Writing Centre. This year, CAES provided one- to-one support sessions to 4,537 students. We selectively recruited and trained 53 students to work in partnership with us as Peer Consultants. These Peer Consultants worked with thousands of undergraduate and postgraduate students to improve their academic literacy skills in preparing for spoken and written assessments as well as assessments requiring digital literacy. Six full-time Communication Advisors also worked in the CSS to provide one-to-one consultations and workshops on specific areas of language development. CAES continued to develop Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs) with an aim to offer English support continuously. These blended-learning courses, which are taken on a voluntary basis, teach a focused language skill intensively and time- efficiently. This year CAES created three newSPOCs which focus on helping students develop skills in