We extend research on social annotation in education by implementing a new annotation technique in the literature classroom. Over the course of one year, we invited students to socially annotate literary texts using emojis that reflected their affective responses to those texts. This approach was inspired by new functions of social annotation…

In this article we share our experiences of using poems in teacher-training courses where the students are predominantly second-language learners. We describe how we tried to help learners engage with a creative text through its language and meaning. We share our experiences of helping to facilitate the open expression of opinions and feelings in…

In the Education Commission Report #4 of Hong Kong, three dimensions of learning are noted: cognitive, interpersonal, and aesthetic. In most Hong Kong schools, teaching focuses on the cognitive dimension and to some extent on the interpersonal. The aesthetic dimension is largely ignored, except for the ubiquitous class reader and a handful of…

The importance of establishing a connection with readers in academic writing is now widely acknowledged. The growing literature on this topic, however, has largely concentrated on published "expert" texts and on the ways that writers use language to project their stance or identity. In contrast, this paper will focus on strategies which…

A study analyzed the discourse in a variety of Hong Kong newspapers to assess how an individual takes on the role of reader in relation to the rather complex public discourse of a daily newspaper, particularly in a multicultural, politically charged context. Four categories of newspaper (Hong Kong English, Hong Kong Chinese, non-Hong Kong Chinese,…