Skip to main content Start main content

Introduction

Intro1

English Across the Curriculum

English Across the Curriculum (EAC) loosely follows the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) approach in North America, and aims to increase students’ exposure to timely English learning resources without taking up much curriculum space (Chen & Morrison, 2021).  A main objective of our EAC model is to work with discipline teachers to enhance students’ writing and speaking skills that they need in disciplinary contexts.  It has now developed into an interdisciplinary and inter-institutional educational movement. 

This model of EAC started at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) in 2013 with a Community of Practice (CoP) seed fund from the Hong Kong University Grants Committee.  PolyU then reached out to three other universities: CityU, HKUST and CUHK to co-develop EAC with the first UGC TLRP funding in 2014, and HKBU joined the team in 2017 with the second UGC TLRP funding in 2017, which was the funding that enabled the development of the EAC mobile app called ‘Capstone Ninja’.  

Main_features

Main features of EAC

1. Offers students timely and targeted language learning resources (EAC resources) that focus on writing and speaking communication in the discipline. 

2. Creates synergy between English teachers and teachers from different disciplines to collaborate on producing discipline-related EAC resources that students will find relevant and useful for their discipline assessment.

EAC deliverables

Students1

Student support

Supporting students by producing timely, tailored and ubiquitous learning resources
teachers

Staff support

Supporting staff from different disciplines through staff development workshops & meetings

Awards received by EAC

2022 UGC Teaching Award

Over the past eight years, The English Across the Curriculum Team has generated multiple innovative and effective strategies for developing students’ academic literacy, including the deployment of multi-modal English Across the Curriculum resources and the mobile app “Capstone Ninja”. 

The Team has successfully built a culture conducive to student-centred and interdisciplinary collaboration, thereby benefitting English teachers, discipline teachers, and their students in UGC-funded universities, and making a significant positive impact on students’ English ability and learning experiences, as well as participating teachers’ teaching capacity and pedagogical approaches across universities.

2022 QS Reimagine Award

Spearheaded by PolyU, the inter-institutional and inter-disciplinary ‘English Across the Curriculum’ (EAC) project team has brought together English language teachers, discipline academics, and educational technologists in the development of an innovative and interactive mobile app called “Capstone Ninja”. The app delivers customised and discipline-specific English learning materials to address the challenges often encountered by students when preparing a capstone project. The EAC team recently also won the Hong Kong University Grants Committee Teaching Award 2022 in the Collaborative Teams category.

English Across the Curriculum: Voices from Around the World Published in 2021 by WAC Clearinghouse / University of Colorado Press

Our publications

The EAC Team has had a number of inter-institutional and inter-disciplinary publications.


More publications

 

Chen, J., Chan, C., Man, V., & Tsang, E. (2021). Helping students from different disciplines with their final year/capstone project: Supervisors’ and students’ needs and requests. In B. Morrison, J. Chen, L. Lin, & A. Urmston. (Eds.) English across the curriculum: Voices from around the world (pp. 91-106). WAC Clearinghouse. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2021.1220.2.05

Chen, J., Chan, C., & Ng, A. (2021). English across the curriculum: Four journeys of synergy across disciplines and universities. In H. Lee, & B. Spolsky (Eds.) Localizing global English: Asian perspectives and practices (pp. 84-103)Oxon: Routledge.

https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003082705

Chen, J., Lai, P., Chan, A., Man, V., & Chan, C-H. (2022). AI-assisted enhancement of student presentation skills: Challenges and opportunities. Sustainability, 15 (1), 196. Special issue on Language Education in the Age of AI and Emerging Technologies.

https://doi.org/10.3390/su15010196

Chen, J. & Morrison, B. (2021). Introduction. In B. Morrison, J. Chen, L. Lin, & A. Urmston. (Eds.) English across the curriculum: Voices from around the world (pp. 3-14). WAC Clearinghouse. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2021.1220.1.3

Chen, J. & Yap, V. (2020). Exploring the use of a mobile application designed for capstone projects for Hong Kong tertiary students. ICERI2020 Proceedings, (pp. 9033-9040). IATED. https://doi.org/10.21125/iceri.2020.2008

Fang, F. & Chak, Y. (2021). Supporting undergraduate student learning through reflective journal writing in a service-learning subject: An interdisciplinary collaborative approach. In B. Morrison, J. Chen, L. Lin, & A. Urmston. (Eds.) English across the curriculum: Voices from around the world (pp. 17-33). WAC Clearinghouse. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2021.1220.2.01

Lai, H. Y-Y., & Pang, A. K-W. (2021). Students’ perceptions of the use of English in a core business subject for first-year business students. In B. Morrison, J. Chen, L. Lin, & A. Urmston. (Eds.) English across the curriculum: Voices from around the world (pp. 59-71). WAC Clearinghouse. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2021.1220.2.03

Lim, G., & Ho, I. (2021). Mobile App and Final Year Project Proposal Writing for Engineering Students. In B. Morrison, J. Chen, L. Lin, & A. Urmston. (Eds.) English across the curriculum: Voices from around the world (pp. 109-125). WAC Clearinghouse. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2021.1220.2.06

Morrison, B., Chen, J., Lin, L., & Urmston, A. (Eds.). (2021). English across the curriculum: Voices from around the world. WAC Clearinghouse. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2021.1220

Townsend, M. A., Zawacki, T. M., Palmquist, M., & Chen, J. (2021). The (transnational) past, present, and future of the Writing Across the Curriculum movement. In B. Morrison, J. Chen, L. Lin, & A. Urmston. (Eds.) English across the curriculum: Voices from around the world (pp. 311-329). WAC Clearinghouse. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2021.1220.2.17

Your browser is not the latest version. If you continue to browse our website, Some pages may not function properly.

You are recommended to upgrade to a newer version or switch to a different browser. A list of the web browsers that we support can be found here