English Across the Curriculum
English Across The Curriculum
English Across the Curriculum (EAC) is an educational approach to extend the formal curriculum to provide customized, dynamic and timely language support for the acquisition and use of English across subjects and disciplines. It primarily aims to develop students’ disciplinary literacy through the close collaboration between language specialists and subject specialists in a Community of Practice (CoP). Synergistically, it complements the formal curriculum and fosters a shared ownership of language education between these two groups of specialists in higher education.
Implemented by the English Language Teaching Unit (ELTU), English Across the Curriculum (EAC) – Institutional Movement at CUHK is an institution-wide language enhancement initiative supported by the Teaching Development and Language Enhancement Grant both for the 2016–2019 & 2019–2022 trienniums. Since 2022, this initiative has been supported by an ear-marked grant. In close collaboration with disciplinary specialists, the project primarily aims to assist content teachers in developing students’ language awareness and language use in their respective disciplines through the integration of content learning and English learning. With improved academic literacy, students are better equipped to demonstrate, apply and master subject knowledge.
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What Our Collaborators Say
Dr Joseph Cho
Lecturer, Gender Studies Programme
“The collaboration with the ELTU on the EAC project has not only greatly benefited students’ learning but also my teaching. I have incorporated the writing-to-learn pedagogy in my course that immensely helps students engage with difficult theoretical texts more critically. The EAC project has also impacted the course assessment, giving the use of language a focus that has often been neglected from assessment design to grading. I enjoy collaborating with the ELTU and feel grateful for having a chance to learn and grow with students.”
Prof Cecilia Chun
Former Director, Centre for Learning Enhancement And Research
“Language is a medium through which knowledge is acquired and skills developed. In a teaching context where English is used as a medium of learning, effective use of English as a learning tool is of prime importance. Through the ‘English across the Curriculum’ project, ELTU has provided students a good opportunity to promote their mastery of discipline knowledge and skills through enhancing their use of English. To make the project a success, ELTU needs the input of teachers in the use of English specific to their respective disciplines. Do sign up as collaborators of the project in order to help your students become competent users of English for academic purposes.”
Dr Murat Es
Former Lecturer, Urban Studies Programme
“I coordinate URSP’s cooperation with the ELTU on the EAC Project. I have personally witnessed how much our students enjoy and appreciate the workshops prepared by Matthew, Olive and Natalie. The ELTU team tailors the workshops according to the specific needs of our students by building their material on the basis of our students’ work from previous years. The workshops offer relatable examples, fun exercises, practical skills and useful techniques, as a result. Our students benefit greatly from these workshops while preparing their Capstone Theses and Capstone Projects. I am grateful for ELTU’s support over the years and look forward to working with the EAC team in the future.”
Prof Peter Winston Ferretto
Director & Associate Professor, School of Architecture
“The results have been of immense value to both the students who have improved their confidence and professors who have learnt important teaching skills. We would greatly encourage you to engage with the EAC project.”
Prof Sidharth Jaggi
Former Associate Professor, Department of Information Engineering
“I really appreciate all the hard work all of you (the TAs, and the ELTU staff) have put into this. The Faculty of Engineering is now considering revamping the overall FYP guidelines for all FoE departments, using IE as a role model, thanks in no small measure to your efforts!”
Dr Otis Lam
Lecturer, Center for Learning Enhancement And Research
“In Science courses, presentation is often assessed but rarely taught explicitly in the course. The EAC project has bridged the gap. It provides an opportunity for my students to rehearse and receive personalized feedback from a language expert, right before the formal group presentation, in my science project course. This cross-discipline collaboration does require some trials and more course planning, but eventually students found the support helpful and useful.”
Prof Suzannie Leung
Associate Professor, Department of Curriculum and Instruction
“The EAC project is vital for developing the BA(ECE) programme. Its effectiveness to our student teachers is far more than English proficiency, but their teaching efficacy in a bilingual context. EAC, indeed, helps to prepare quality kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong. This project is definitely a socially-impactful one!”
Dr Jeffrey Levenberg
Former Assistant Professor, Department of Music
“The EAC workshops are well-planned in advance, with key demonstrative points … assessment methods are comprehensive – and I can see the students’ improvement even when they themselves cannot.”
Professor Lu Yi-Chun
Professor, Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering
“The EAC team designed English writing lecture for my class (senior elective engineering class). They teach students professional technical writing and help them to avoid some common mistakes. The collaboration is very useful and highly appreciated by the students.”
Dr John O’Reilly
Lecturer, Department of Sports Science and Physical Education
“The ELTU staff have been very supportive and creative with their methods of delivering interactive workshops and also extremely thorough in their commitment to offering individual feedback to students.”
Prof Isabella Poon
Provost / Wei Lun Professor, Department of Statistics
“EAC facilitates me to work with ELTU colleagues to nurture a learning outcome crucial to students’ future success: Capability to concisely and precisely communicate complicated statistics concepts to non-specialists.”
Prof Amos Tai
Professor/Deputy Chair (Education), Earth System Science Programme
“We are fortunate to work with ELTU under the English Across Curriculum umbrella, which has helped our students improve their English in their written reports and oral presentations during their final-year projects. These are important transferable skills in their future endeavors, advancing their careers in the geosciences and beyond through effective English communication.”
Ms Elaine Tam
Director, Office of Student Affairs
“Special thanks to the EAC team for working with the CUHK Business School on a series of workshops to hone our students’ presentation and communication skills, and prepare them for case competitions. Students found the workshops exhilarating, inspiring and fun!”
Dr Tammy Tam
Senior Lecturer, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
“Students could learn various English usage specifically in the Science field and we believe that it is beneficial to our students. The cooperation with ELTU is a breakthrough and we look forward to more future development in English learning in Science.”
Prof Wai Lun Tam
Research Professor & Emeritus Professor, Department of Cultural and Religious Studies
“Since we joined the EAC initiative scheme of our ELTU, the result of the Graduate Capabilities Questionnaire (GCQ) of our Religious Studies Programme on ‘communication skills in English’ of our students has improved significantly, from lower than the University and Faculty means to higher than both means in two consecutive years (2019 & 2020).”
Professor Hendrik Tieben
Professor & Associate Director, School Director of Architecture
“We highly appreciate EAC’s service to our school. The EAC Team is strongly committed, and its teaching approach is highly engaging and effective. The team made a great effort to adjust all learning contents to the requirements of our field and the specific needs of our students. We would be happy to extend our collaboration in the future.”
Prof Pascal Vontobel
Professor & Chairman and Graduate Division Head, Department of Information Engineering
“As part of their education, undergraduate students at the Department of Information Engineering at CUHK do a final-year project (FYP), which is typically done in Terms 1 and 2 of the fourth year of study. As part of this FYP, students have to write various documents (proposal, mid-term report, final report) and give a final presentation in both terms. An important aspect of these documents and presentations is that the students learn what each of these documents and presentations should contain and how to properly express and present results in English.
The Department of Information Engineering has been fortunate to have been working with ELTU since 2016 toward improving the quality of students’ reports and presentations. This has been achieved, on the one hand, by ELTU offering mandatory workshops for students, and, on the other hand, by ELTU offering training workshops for teaching assistants from the Department of Information Engineering, where the teaching assistants learn how to assess documents and presentations and then give detailed feedback to the students. These activities have noticeably helped our students to produce better documents and presentations.
Overall, the collaboration with ELTU has been very enjoyable and we strongly hope that it can be continued in future years.”
Prof Weizhao Zhang
Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering
“The EAC project by ELTU has been a great help to our FYP students in the past few years. Through trainings from this program, our students gained essential academic/technical report writing skills, such as accurate grammar, clear content structures and rich vocabulary. Such writing skills lead to FYP reports that are easy to comprehend and a pleasure to read. FYP supervisors in our department can therefore focus less on correcting the writing and more on providing insights on the research content.”
Dr Wing Hung Wong
Deputy Programme Director, General Education Foundation Programme
“The successful collaboration between the EAC team and the General Education Foundation Programme has created a vibrant community of practice, which will create a community of curious learners.”
Earth System Science Programme Team
“We are fortunate to work with ELTU under the English Across Curriculum umbrella, which has helped our students improve their English in their written reports and oral presentations during their final-year projects. These are important transferable skills in their future endeavors, advancing their careers in the geosciences and beyond through effective English communication.”
Social Work Undergraduate Programme Team
“We would like to thank English Language Teaching Unit (ELTU) for tailoring two language proficiency courses for our social work students, with ongoing efforts in updating the course content and teaching sequence so that the teaching may complement students’ progress of professional placements. While our programme educates students with professional skills, ELTU provides precious opportunity for students to practice writing with proper genre and a variety of language.”
Teaching Assistant, Department of Statistics
“As you can see from the file, students do improve a lot in the final examination. From my observation, the most transparent difference is that they start to pay attention to the details, such like most of them added a title, and try to explain without using too much terminology…”
Teaching Assistant, Department of Statistics
“As a former undergraduate student, I really appreciate the crossover of statistical courses and language learning. It gives a good chance to improve the language skills while learning statistics…Thank you.”
Teaching Assistant, Department of Statistics
“Thanks a lot for this opportunity. I am really glad to see the improvement of students when marking their paper. For me, I have learnt a lot also throughout the project. In particular, I find the English grammar coming more natural and logical to me compared with what I used to learn. Thanks again for this project.”