Project on Building Robots for Musical Training of ASD Children Funded by SCOLAR

Our Faculty member Dr Chen Si’s project “Developing a Social Robot for Cantonese and Mandarin Speech Prosody Training in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder” received a funding of over one million Hong Kong dollars from the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR). The proposed project and its deliverables may significantly improve ASD children’s speech, communication and learning skills. The project will be the first to examine both Cantonese and Mandarin speech prosody production by trilingual children with and without ASD at Hong Kong. In addition, it aims to use sung speech training to improve speech prosody production of ASD children, which will be beneficial for education development and clinical applications. The sung speech training methods target at the prosody deficit of ASD children and aim to improve their mapping between acoustic cues and information structure. Since communicating with robots is considered less frustrating for ASD children, the proposed project aims to build a social robot with designed interaction tasks based on our sung speech training program. In the future, the social robot can be further modified and developed to support various needs of ASD children in learning languages and communication skills.

Two FH MOOC Projects Awarded Funding from the University

The following MOOC projects from FH have recently been awarded funding by the University: Critically Human: Asian and Western Approaches to Big Questions (Project Leader: Dr Mark Meulenbeld, Associate Dean of FH) This project is a cross-Faculty inter-departmental MOOC which aims to make a critical contribution to an increasingly complex world by asking (and answering) this basic question: What are the critical issues in a human life? This question, aside from its inherent value, should be relevant for learners beyond Humanities, especially those who are shaping the world through STEM disciplines. MOOC course for Cantonese learning--Cantonese for Beginners (Project Leader: Dr Ken Cheng and Dr David Yuen from CLC) This project is proposed by our Chinese Language Centre with an aim to help learners understand the basic phonological structure of Cantonese (using the Jyutping system) and engage in simple conversation in Cantonese. Stay tuned for further updates on these MOOCs!

FH Attained Favourable Results in Research Assessment Exercise 2020

The University Grants Committee (UGC) announced on 24 May the results of Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2020. The Unit of Assessment (UoA) Linguistics and Language Studies at PolyU received the combined percentage of 66% for 4-star (“world-leading”) or 3-star (“internationally excellent”) ratings. It is noteworthy that 100% of our Environment in the RAE UoA Linguistics and Language Studies achieved “world-leading” standard. In addition, 62% of our research in History was ranked as “internationally excellent”. The UGC took constant effort in assessing the research performance of the UGC-funded universities through the RAE 2020. The period covered in this assessment was from October 2013 to September 2019. Over 4,200 eligible academic staff from the eight institutions submitted about 16,000 research outputs, 340 research impact case studies and 190 research environment submissions.

Celebrating PolyU’s 85th Anniversary — Share your ideas. Receive a cash award of HK$10,000 or other prizes!

PolyU will celebrate its 85th anniversary in 2022. As part of the celebratory activities, the University is calling for ideas from members of the PolyU community on the following: PolyU's 85th Anniversary Theme Song Lyrics Contest PolyU-and-You Video Contest You-Design-Your-PolyU Souvenirs Contest Call for PolyU Memorabilia The top three entries in each category will be awarded a cash prize of HK$10,000! Share your ideas and submit your entries by 30 June 2021. Please click HERE for more details. Online submission form: https://www.polyu.edu.hk/pfs/index.php/396263

PolyU-trained Students Take Home Eight Awards at APLO 2021

The Hong Kong Linguistics Olympiad (HKLO) team, jointly trained by the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies and the Department of English, has proudly won eight medals (one Gold, two Silvers and five Bronzes) among 182 contestants from six countries or regions at the 3rd Asia Pacific Linguistics Olympiad (APLO 2021) held on 28 March 2021.

Resumption of Reception Counter Services (w.e.f. 18 February 2021)

The reception counter of the Faculty of Humanities will resume service during normal office hours from 18 February 2021, i.e. from 8:45am to 1:00pm and from 2:00pm to 5:35pm, Monday to Friday (except public holidays). Nonetheless, in order to minimise contact between people, you are strongly encouraged to contact us by phone at 3400 8212 or 3400 8216 / email: fh.enquiry@polyu.edu.hk if you need assistance. You are advised to wear a mask if you come to the office in person. The opening hours of the counter may be subject to change according to the development of the novel coronavirus epidemic. Please stay tuned for our updates.  

Faculty Dean Prof. Li Ping Appointed as Senior Editor

Our Faculty Dean, Prof. Li Ping, has been appointed as Senior Editor for Cognitive Science, the official journal of the Cognitive Science Society. Cognitive Science is a multidisciplinary journal that publishes articles in all areas of cognitive science, covering such topics as knowledge representation, inference, memory processes, learning, problem solving, planning, perception, natural language understanding, connectionism, brain theory, motor control, intentional systems, and other areas of interdisciplinary concern.

PolyU Team Won AACL Best Paper

The collaborative paper "Comparing Probabilistic, Distributional and Transformer-Based Models on Logical Metonymy Interpretation" written by a team of scholars from Aix-Marseille University, University of Pisa and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University has been selected as the 2020 AACL best paper. The PolyU authors are Dr Emmanuele Chersoni (Postdoctoral Fellow of CBS) and Prof. Huang Chu-Ren (Chair Professor of CBS). AACL is the Asian Chapter of ACL (Association for Computational Linguistics). ACL is generally considered as the top conference in computational linguistics, and its three regional chapters (AACL in Asia, EACL in Europe, and NAACL in North America) are generally considered to be of comparable quality but smaller in scale.

Prof. William S-Y Wang's Interview in the New Issue of Excel x Impact

Prof. William S-Y. Wang, Chair Professor of Language and Cognitive Sciences (Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies), was interviewed by the PolyU's magazine Excel x Impact in its new issue. Read the full story here:

FH MOOC Announced as 2020 edX Prize Finalist

FH MOOC “Success: Practical Thinking Skills” (Project Leader: Dr Jack Chun) is a finalist for the fifth annual edX Prize for Exceptional Contributions in Online Teaching and Learning. The edX Prize celebrates the contributions and innovations of teachers in the edX community, and amplifies the powerful role that online education at scale plays in the transformation of education today. Results of the 2020 edX Prize will be announced in early December. For more details:  https://blog.edx.org/congratulations-2020-edx-prize-finalists/