English in the Discipline Courses for Arts Students at HKU: Programme Design, Course Assessments and Feedback Practices

Abstract

The Centre for Applied English Studies (CAES) English in the Discipline (ED) Courses for the Faculty of Arts at HKU were revised in the 2016-17 academic year by the previous Arts Programme Coordinator, Mr Sam Cole in consultation with the schools in the Faculty of Arts. The Arts ED courses presented difficulties in terms of course design not only because students from the Faculty of Arts are required to read and write a diverse range of genres and text types, but also because the Faculty of Arts itself encompasses a wide array of disciplines, contexts and subject matters. In this talk, we will show how these difficulties were addressed by building the ED courses around a highly flexible genre, the bibliographic essay, and by raising student awareness of genre through the teaching and practice of “elemental genres” (Hyland 2007). We will also point out where the courses and their assessments have been informed by the work of Alan Hirvela in stressing the connections between reading and writing. After discussing the courses and their underlying pedagogy, we will then explain the formative feedback practices we use and how peer feedback is conducted.