An interdisciplinary project to develop a digital multimedia resource to meet law students’ legal English needs: findings, progress and resources

Abstract

Learning 'legal English', the specialist language that students encounter in law school, is challenging. Law students must learn to use English forms and structures in such a way as to meet the expectations of members of the legal academic community, consistent with the conventions of the legal discipline. Legal English presents a particularly daunting challenge for English language learners, like those who take up legal study at Hong Kong universities. A key challenge for such law students is learning to use legal English effectively to apply rules of law to fact situations and drawing conclusions in such a way that students demonstrate they are capable of 'thinking like a lawyer'. The interdisciplinary Legal English project has been set up to help students meet these challenges and combines the expertise of lawyers and language teachers/applied linguists to develop a digital multimedia resource for legal English based on an analysis of the language needs of Hong Kong law students. The project addresses students' legal English needs both generally and with particular reference to the most common tasks and genres with which law students engage: essays, legal problem questions, memoranda, dissertations and oral mooting. The project has three aspects: 1) an in-depth analysis of students' legal English learning needs; 2) the creation and online publication of video-based instructional materials; and 3) implementation of the materials in language and content courses. During this presentation the projects' investigators will outline the progress and findings of the project thus far and will share with the audience some of the digital resources created for the project.