Language and Literature Division, Faculty of Education, Hong Kong University

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The Language and Literature Division (LLD) is the largest of the six divisions of the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong (HKU). It is currently home to 34 academic staff, who specialize either in the fields of Chinese Language, English Language and/or Literature Education, and to 60 full-time and 28 part-time doctoral students, who are researching a wide range of topics including subjects as diverse as corpus-aided language learning, task-based language teaching in primary schools, the English writing of Chinese undergraduates, and the impact of school-based assessment. Staff are very active in conducting their own research, much of which is rooted in classrooms and focuses on issues that directly concern the teaching and learning of languages, such as reading literacy, school-based assessment and assessment for learning in English Language, the teaching of Chinese characters, and good practices in English Language Teaching in Hong Kong secondary schools (see http://good-practices.edb.hkedcity.net/). Colleagues in the English Language area have played important roles in the HKU Strategic Research Theme ‘Language in education and assessment’. This initiative brought together staff from a range of disciplines in various forms of language-related research collaboration, culminating in two large and highly successful international conferences in June 2008: one focusing on language awareness and the other on language issues in English-medium universities (see http://www.hku.hk/clear/).