“Playing with English: Creative Writing in Hong Kong Secondary School Classrooms”

I’ve been invited to speak to a roomful of applied linguists about the creative writing workshops I lead as part of CUHK’s Masterclasses program, and my work with the Education Bureau of Hong Kong. I have many AEL colleagues, but we’ve never talked about how what we do is related, so I’m really looking forward to this. Here’s the abstract:

As Hong Kong educators and parents know, English is a core subject for everyone beginning in Primary One, and it's no longer official policy to rank schools in “bands.” But there’s a wide gap between the kinds of English instruction offered at legacy “Band One” schools on the one hand, and historically less elite schools on the other. Since 2016, I have worked with several local institutions, including the Hong Kong Education Bureau and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, to build programs that bring creative and fun encounters with English language and literature to students (and their teachers) across a range of assessed English fluency levels. In this talk, I’ll discuss how “playing with English” can be a powerful tool to help students at every level become more confident, enthusiastic speakers and writers.