Although there have been several studies on the Tangut fragment with Tibetan phonetic glosses, Or... more Although there have been several studies on the Tangut fragment with Tibetan phonetic glosses, Or. 12380/3495, which is now preserved at the British Library, some questions concerning it remain unsolved. This paper first provides a brief account of the fragment. Then it examines the damaged Tibetan writing with uncertain meaning on the top left corner of the fragment, and proposes that this Tibetan writing is in fact a phonetic gloss of the first five Tangut characters of line 5 in the Tangut text. This paper also provides a comprehensive collation of the fragment, and suggests that the source of the Tangut text should be belonging to the cult of the Thirty-five Buddhas.
Abstract Social media hold great potential for language learning since language learning is close... more Abstract Social media hold great potential for language learning since language learning is closely intertwined with socialization. However, previous studies have primarily examined social media experience as a whole, without taking into consideration of the differential influences of different types of social media activities. This study examined how different social media activities impacted language learning motivation through analyzing survey responses from 565 secondary school south and southeast Asian students in Hong Kong. The structural equation modeling analysis revealed that passive consumption of social media contents and active contribution of social media contents both contributed positively to language learning motivation via both cultural identification and ideal L2 self. However, the two types of social media activities were associated with cultural identification differently, where passive consumption predicted bicultural harmony and active contribution predicted bicultural blendedness. The findings confirm the value of both types of social media activities and suggest capitalizing on the motivational impact of everyday social media activities for language learning. The findings call for in-depth research into the differential impacts of different social media activities.
This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of Halliday’s Sydney School genrebased approach ... more This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of Halliday’s Sydney School genrebased approach in teaching Chinese written composition to South Asian ethnic minority students in Hong Kong. Chinese language, with its heightened status in Hong Kong, holds a key for South Asians with low socio-economic status to obtain upward mobility (Shum, Gao, Tsung, and Ki, 2011). However, South Asian ethnic minority students, as a disadvantaged group of second language learners, lack sufficient parental and institutional support in Chinese language learning. The genrebased pedagogy derived from Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) was applied in this study to improve Chinese language performance of South Asian ethnic minority students for a better chance to participate in mainstream society. The SFL approach is primarily concerned with language choice in social situations and has been widely applied in sociolinguistics (Hyland, 2007, 2012). Its latest model in language teaching methodology, the ’Reading to Learn, Learning to Write’ (R2L) pedagogy, is a genre-based teaching strategy which is designed to guide students to experience different levels of language through extensive classroom reading and writing activities with selected texts. The current study is intended to extend the approach to teaching and learning Chinese as a second language. The employment of genre-based pedagogy aims to support South Asian students with their learning of Chinese written composition in the senior secondary curriculum. The Chinese teachers involved were first provided with appropriate training in the genre-based approach to language teaching focusing on the genres of Narration and Explanation. Research data were collected while the teachers began to use theand Explanation. Research data were collected while the teachers began to use the and Explanation. Research data were collected while the teachers began to use the genre-based teaching approach, by means of pre- and post-tests after and before genre instruction. Text analysis based on SFL was then employed to analyze the students’ written composition in both pre- and post-tests in order to understand the effectiveness of the genre-based pedagogy in teaching Chinese as a second language. The finding shows that the students at the high, medium, and low levels improved both in the construction of schematic structure and the variation of lexicogrammatical choices from the whole-text, sentence and word levels respectively in their writing performance. Hopefully, the findings will help curriculum development and teacher education for teaching Chinese as a second language to non-Chinese speaking students in Hong Kong and beyond.
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 2016
ABSTRACT Non-Chinese-speaking (NCS) South Asian students, as ethnic minority group in Hong Kong, ... more ABSTRACT Non-Chinese-speaking (NCS) South Asian students, as ethnic minority group in Hong Kong, are the main disadvantaged social cohort in Chinese language learning. It has been a challenge for L1 Chinese teachers to conduct L2 Chinese teaching to NCS students with diversified native languages and socio-cultural backgrounds. ‘Reading to Learn, Learning to Write’ (R2L) pedagogy has proven effective in L2 English teaching to aboriginal students in Australia and has been focusing on teaching English in other parts of the world [Rose, D., and J. R. Martin, 2012. Learning to Write, Reading to Learn: Genre, Knowledge and Pedagogy in the Sydney School. London: Equinox]. The current study aims to explore the effectiveness of ‘R2L’ pedagogy to teach Chinese written composition of discussion to NCS students in Hong Kong. Through in-class teaching, data were collected from classroom observation and pre/post-tests in order to understand the performance of NCS students in Chinese written composition before and after the application of R2L pedagogy. Students’ learning experience in R2L sessions will also be perceived through interviews. Through integration of reading and writing, the R2L pedagogy provides students with abundant support in language input and output. Moreover, NCS students have shown great improvements in writing after R2L teaching.
More than two decades ago Wang Jingru reminded fellow academics of the importance of Tangut Buddh... more More than two decades ago Wang Jingru reminded fellow academics of the importance of Tangut Buddhist dhāraṇī for the study of Tangut phonology. In recent decades Wang Jingru discussed issues such as Tangut pre-nasalized initials and nasal finals based on the evidence of Sanskrit-Tangut transliteration in the Uṣṇīṣa Vijaya Dhāraṇī and the Suvarṇaprabhāsa Sūtra .However, the analysis of transliteration in this paper is based mainly on examples from the Uṣṇīṣa Vijaya Dhāraṇī and the Dpal kun tu kha sbyor źes bya baḥi rgyud . In conclusion, through the analysis of Sanskrit-Tangut transliteration in Tangut Buddhist incantations, the Tangut initial table can be modified. Keywords:dhāraṇī; Sanskrit-Tangut transliterations; Tangut Buddhist incantations; Tangut consonant system; Wang Jingru
Abstract: This thesis investigates 20 Tangut fragments with phonological transcription in Tibetan... more Abstract: This thesis investigates 20 Tangut fragments with phonological transcription in Tibetan which have been preserved in the Russian and British collections. First all Tangut characters and their Tibetan transcription are identified, followed by a rearrangement of ...
This paper examines the content of the Tangut text in one of the largest joinable pieces of Tangu... more This paper examines the content of the Tangut text in one of the largest joinable pieces of Tangut fragments with Tibetan phonetic glosses, Fr. 3(8), Fr. 9(14), and Fr. 1(6) from инв. 8363 of the Archives of Orientalists of the Institute of Oriental Manuscript, Russian Academy of Sciences. A detailed sentence-based translation of the Tangut text is provided. The interpretation of these fragments suggests that the Tangut text is an instruction for vase breathing and inner fire meditation, which is also known as “tummo.” This text should relate to the Six Yogas of Nāropa, which was mainly practiced by the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism during the Tangut era. The content of the text should help further study on the identification of the origin of the text, and on the examination of the date of the fragments, which would be critical in the study of the Tibetan phonetic glosses of the Tangut characters.
Although there have been several studies on the Tangut fragment with Tibetan phonetic glosses, Or... more Although there have been several studies on the Tangut fragment with Tibetan phonetic glosses, Or. 12380/3495, which is now preserved at the British Library, some questions concerning it remain unsolved. This paper first provides a brief account of the fragment. Then it examines the damaged Tibetan writing with uncertain meaning on the top left corner of the fragment, and proposes that this Tibetan writing is in fact a phonetic gloss of the first five Tangut characters of line 5 in the Tangut text. This paper also provides a comprehensive collation of the fragment, and suggests that the source of the Tangut text should be belonging to the cult of the Thirty-five Buddhas.
Abstract Social media hold great potential for language learning since language learning is close... more Abstract Social media hold great potential for language learning since language learning is closely intertwined with socialization. However, previous studies have primarily examined social media experience as a whole, without taking into consideration of the differential influences of different types of social media activities. This study examined how different social media activities impacted language learning motivation through analyzing survey responses from 565 secondary school south and southeast Asian students in Hong Kong. The structural equation modeling analysis revealed that passive consumption of social media contents and active contribution of social media contents both contributed positively to language learning motivation via both cultural identification and ideal L2 self. However, the two types of social media activities were associated with cultural identification differently, where passive consumption predicted bicultural harmony and active contribution predicted bicultural blendedness. The findings confirm the value of both types of social media activities and suggest capitalizing on the motivational impact of everyday social media activities for language learning. The findings call for in-depth research into the differential impacts of different social media activities.
This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of Halliday’s Sydney School genrebased approach ... more This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of Halliday’s Sydney School genrebased approach in teaching Chinese written composition to South Asian ethnic minority students in Hong Kong. Chinese language, with its heightened status in Hong Kong, holds a key for South Asians with low socio-economic status to obtain upward mobility (Shum, Gao, Tsung, and Ki, 2011). However, South Asian ethnic minority students, as a disadvantaged group of second language learners, lack sufficient parental and institutional support in Chinese language learning. The genrebased pedagogy derived from Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) was applied in this study to improve Chinese language performance of South Asian ethnic minority students for a better chance to participate in mainstream society. The SFL approach is primarily concerned with language choice in social situations and has been widely applied in sociolinguistics (Hyland, 2007, 2012). Its latest model in language teaching methodology, the ’Reading to Learn, Learning to Write’ (R2L) pedagogy, is a genre-based teaching strategy which is designed to guide students to experience different levels of language through extensive classroom reading and writing activities with selected texts. The current study is intended to extend the approach to teaching and learning Chinese as a second language. The employment of genre-based pedagogy aims to support South Asian students with their learning of Chinese written composition in the senior secondary curriculum. The Chinese teachers involved were first provided with appropriate training in the genre-based approach to language teaching focusing on the genres of Narration and Explanation. Research data were collected while the teachers began to use theand Explanation. Research data were collected while the teachers began to use the and Explanation. Research data were collected while the teachers began to use the genre-based teaching approach, by means of pre- and post-tests after and before genre instruction. Text analysis based on SFL was then employed to analyze the students’ written composition in both pre- and post-tests in order to understand the effectiveness of the genre-based pedagogy in teaching Chinese as a second language. The finding shows that the students at the high, medium, and low levels improved both in the construction of schematic structure and the variation of lexicogrammatical choices from the whole-text, sentence and word levels respectively in their writing performance. Hopefully, the findings will help curriculum development and teacher education for teaching Chinese as a second language to non-Chinese speaking students in Hong Kong and beyond.
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 2016
ABSTRACT Non-Chinese-speaking (NCS) South Asian students, as ethnic minority group in Hong Kong, ... more ABSTRACT Non-Chinese-speaking (NCS) South Asian students, as ethnic minority group in Hong Kong, are the main disadvantaged social cohort in Chinese language learning. It has been a challenge for L1 Chinese teachers to conduct L2 Chinese teaching to NCS students with diversified native languages and socio-cultural backgrounds. ‘Reading to Learn, Learning to Write’ (R2L) pedagogy has proven effective in L2 English teaching to aboriginal students in Australia and has been focusing on teaching English in other parts of the world [Rose, D., and J. R. Martin, 2012. Learning to Write, Reading to Learn: Genre, Knowledge and Pedagogy in the Sydney School. London: Equinox]. The current study aims to explore the effectiveness of ‘R2L’ pedagogy to teach Chinese written composition of discussion to NCS students in Hong Kong. Through in-class teaching, data were collected from classroom observation and pre/post-tests in order to understand the performance of NCS students in Chinese written composition before and after the application of R2L pedagogy. Students’ learning experience in R2L sessions will also be perceived through interviews. Through integration of reading and writing, the R2L pedagogy provides students with abundant support in language input and output. Moreover, NCS students have shown great improvements in writing after R2L teaching.
More than two decades ago Wang Jingru reminded fellow academics of the importance of Tangut Buddh... more More than two decades ago Wang Jingru reminded fellow academics of the importance of Tangut Buddhist dhāraṇī for the study of Tangut phonology. In recent decades Wang Jingru discussed issues such as Tangut pre-nasalized initials and nasal finals based on the evidence of Sanskrit-Tangut transliteration in the Uṣṇīṣa Vijaya Dhāraṇī and the Suvarṇaprabhāsa Sūtra .However, the analysis of transliteration in this paper is based mainly on examples from the Uṣṇīṣa Vijaya Dhāraṇī and the Dpal kun tu kha sbyor źes bya baḥi rgyud . In conclusion, through the analysis of Sanskrit-Tangut transliteration in Tangut Buddhist incantations, the Tangut initial table can be modified. Keywords:dhāraṇī; Sanskrit-Tangut transliterations; Tangut Buddhist incantations; Tangut consonant system; Wang Jingru
Abstract: This thesis investigates 20 Tangut fragments with phonological transcription in Tibetan... more Abstract: This thesis investigates 20 Tangut fragments with phonological transcription in Tibetan which have been preserved in the Russian and British collections. First all Tangut characters and their Tibetan transcription are identified, followed by a rearrangement of ...
This paper examines the content of the Tangut text in one of the largest joinable pieces of Tangu... more This paper examines the content of the Tangut text in one of the largest joinable pieces of Tangut fragments with Tibetan phonetic glosses, Fr. 3(8), Fr. 9(14), and Fr. 1(6) from инв. 8363 of the Archives of Orientalists of the Institute of Oriental Manuscript, Russian Academy of Sciences. A detailed sentence-based translation of the Tangut text is provided. The interpretation of these fragments suggests that the Tangut text is an instruction for vase breathing and inner fire meditation, which is also known as “tummo.” This text should relate to the Six Yogas of Nāropa, which was mainly practiced by the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism during the Tangut era. The content of the text should help further study on the identification of the origin of the text, and on the examination of the date of the fragments, which would be critical in the study of the Tibetan phonetic glosses of the Tangut characters.
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