Asynchronous (Online) Applied Linguistics / Second Language Acquisition Graduate Student Showcase (Asynchronous)
Relative Clauses in Written Hong Kong English: A Corpus Based Study
This study verifies predictions of hypotheses about second language learners’ development of English relative clauses (RCs) with data of written Hong Kong English (HKE) and identifies quantitative and qualitative differences in attributes of RCs between HKE and British English (BrE). Data were collected from the Hong Kong and Great Britain components of the International Corpus of English. wh relatives and that relatives were identified and coded. Frequencies of occurrence of distinct types of RCs in the Hong Kong component were compared to evaluate whether predictions of the three hypotheses are supported. RCs in the two components of the corpus were compared quantitatively and qualitatively. Hypotheses about second language learners’ development of English relative clauses and comparisons between relative clauses in the two varieties can inform English language education in foreign language classrooms to embrace variational diversity of the English language.
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Chi Wui Ng is a versatile Hong Kong Chinese who is a doctoral student in the Academic Unit of Social Contexts and Policies of Education, the University of Hong Kong. Prior to commencement of his doctoral studies, he completed a co-terminal double degree programme in English Studies and English Language Education along with a Linguistics minor during his undergraduate studies and completed a research Master’s degree in Applied English Linguistics while serving as a full-time Graduate Master in aided secondary schools in Hong Kong. His research interests in the field of educational studies are higher education, doctoral education, and social reproduction whilst my research interests in the field of applied linguistics are English grammar, second language development, second language instruction, pedagogical grammar, grammar of Hong Kong English, and corpus linguistics. His publications have appeared in myriads of local, regional, and international journals.