Nurturing ground for culturally literate teachers and language professionals
'E&L is unique because it is E and L,' says Dean Prof. Amy Lee Wai-sum, who joined the School of Education and Languages (E&L) in February last year. Indeed, education and languages are broad and diverse disciplines. This gives the School an interesting student mix and opens up immense opportunities for interdisciplinary learning. Hailing from a background in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, Prof. Lee is eager to sharpen the School's interdisciplinary character.
As half a language school, E&L employs its expertise in language education to ensure that its graduates, regardless of specialization, are linguistically and culturally competent in Hong Kong's international and bilingual environment. It is a forerunner of organizing overseas immersion programmes, launching the three-week English Language and Culture Immersion Programme in partnership with the University of Warwick back in 2008. More recently, students have been given more diverse cultural exposure through a two-week Japan Cultural Immersion Programme hosted by Toyo University and a four-week UBC Summer Study Tour in Canada. To help students hone their English skills, the School has hired two English-speaking teaching assistants to hold one-to-one consultation sessions, workshops on interesting themes such as ‘Shakespeare on paper and film', and monthly coffee meetups. E&L is also home to the HKMU Trilingual Toastmasters Club, the first of its kind among local tertiary institutions that trains students in English, Cantonese and Mandarin public speaking.
Mastering languages and cultures
As half a language school, E&L employs its expertise in language education to ensure that its graduates, regardless of specialization, are linguistically and culturally competent in Hong Kong's international and bilingual environment. It is a forerunner of organizing overseas immersion programmes, launching the three-week English Language and Culture Immersion Programme in partnership with the University of Warwick back in 2008. More recently, students have been given more diverse cultural exposure through a two-week Japan Cultural Immersion Programme hosted by Toyo University and a four-week UBC Summer Study Tour in Canada. To help students hone their English skills, the School has hired two Englishspeaking teaching assistants to hold one-to-one consultation sessions, workshops on interesting themes such as ‘Shakespeare on paper and film', and monthly coffee meetups.E&L is also home to the HKMU Trilingual Toastmasters Club, the first of its kind among local tertiary institutions that trains students in English, Cantonese and Mandarin public speaking.
An interdisciplinary
learning environment
The School offers six full-time undergraduate programmes — plus a good selection of part-time distance learning ones — under the Department of Education and Department of Applied Language Studies. Thanks to overlaps between the single-degree Language Studies and double-degree Language Teaching and Language Studies programmes, students on different programmes majoring in the same language (Chinese/English) meet in the common language studies courses. Prof. Lee sees this as a positive learning experience.
'Not only do students learn from teachers, but they also learn from each other,' she says. Adding to the diversity is a single degree in Early Childhood Education (Leadership and Special Educational Needs), and a double degree in Bilingual Communication and Global Business co-offered with the Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration. The School takes advantage of its relatively small size to maximize interdisciplinary interaction,organizing many extra-curricular activities on a School basis that allow students from different academic backgrounds to interact and learn life skills together.
The School offers six full-time undergraduate programmes — plus a good selection of part-time distance learning ones — under the Department of Education and Department of Applied Language Studies. Thanks to overlaps between the single-degree Language Studies and double-degree Language Teaching and Language Studies programmes, students on different programmes majoring in the same language (Chinese/English) meet in the common language studies courses. Prof. Lee sees this as a positive learning experience. 'Not only do students learn from teachers, but they also learn from each other,' she says. Adding to the diversity is a single degree in Early Childhood Education (Leadership and Special Educational Needs), and a double degree in Bilingual Communication and Global Business co-offered with the Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration. The School takes advantage of its relatively small size to maximize interdisciplinary interaction, organizing many extra-curricular activities on a School basis that allow students from different academic backgrounds to interact and learn life skills together. 
Individually, each programme is designed with practical elements to familiarize students with the corresponding profession. The Chinese and English Language Teaching degrees each comes with a practicum that comprises teaching as well as non-teaching experiences in local primary and secondary schools. The Language Studies programmes offer students the option to take an offshore credit-bearing course, namely Intercultural Pragmatics with the University of Warwick for English majors, and Children's Drama with the National Taiwan University of Arts or the National Putonghua Proficiency Test course in Beijing for Chinese majors. In fact, applied drama is a signature feature in the Chinese programmes. Last year, two students in Chinese Language Teaching impressed the judges at the Eighth Hong Kong Outstanding Prospective Teachers Award with lesson plans that incorporate drama and took home merit awards.
In the field of Early Childhood Education, the School enjoys a long-term partnership with Heep Hong Society in developing the Special Educational Needs (SEN) curriculum. Since the beginning of 2021, the Child Development Centre co-run with the organization at the Jockey Club Institute of Healthcare has provided a convenient site for training students in supporting SEN children. The full-time Childhood Education programme also organizes dedicated study tours featuring academic conferences, workshops and kindergarten visits to destinations such as the Netherlands and Nanjing.
