This course gives students the opportunity to develop their critical skills by engaging in analysis of literary and cultural texts, and academic texts about literature, culture or language. Students are guided to share their findings in workshops, class discussions and presentations. Through the course, students develop the ability to evaluate academic quality in a text, identify its main ideas and express them accurately in their own words.

This course presents students with some more challenging readings in English through class discussion and writing tasks, including a substantial academic term paper. Emphasis is placed on various techniques of textual analysis and both verbal and written responses to literary and cultural texts using the conventions of academic English. The workshop approach in the course includes regular in-class exercises and analyses of relevant examples.

This course aims to introduce students to various genres of literature (short story, poetry, drama, fiction) as well as to critical reading methods.  It also aims to enhance students’ appreciation and understanding of major types of literature and equip them with the ability to develop critical approaches to thinking, reading and writing about literary works.

This course equips students with the basic skills and techniques they need to produce quality translations. Emphasis is placed on the similarities and differences between Chinese and English at the lexical, syntactical and textual levels and their influences on translation. After studying the course, students are expected to understand the basic principles of translation and employ the correct procedures for analysing the source text and producing an appropriate target text.

Through examining texts, artistic forms and practices that reflect and produce different cultures, students will be encouraged to develop a critical awareness of cultural phenomena.  Concepts such as multiculturalism, diaspora, hybridity, globalism, localism and transnationalism will be discussed.  Emphasis will be placed on Hong Kong culture as a basic reference point in its contact and interaction with other cultures.

This course introduces the fundamental concepts of linguistics and the major areas of linguistics, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. It introduces students to the techniques of linguistic analysis and equips them with knowledge and skills for future linguistic research and studies.

This course focuses on building discussion and oral comprehension skills, including note-taking ability, through class discussions and a range of engaging and enjoyable speaking activities. The course encourages students to develop the confidence to express their opinions and ask questions in exploring a range of interesting topical themes.

This course focuses on further developing students’ discussion, oral comprehension and note-taking skills through class discussions and communicative activities based around important and interesting topical themes. Emphasis will be placed on building effective presentation.

This course introduces students to various ways of engaging with literary texts from feminist perspectives. Taking literary texts as a major site of political contestation, feminists have developed a tradition of readings and writings that contributes to multiple interpretations of modern culture. Topics of the course will include introduction to feminist theories, representation of women in various cultural texts, and the traditions of women’s writings which have evolved over time.

This course introduces students to the primary classical myths and legends of ancient Greece and Rome which permeate Western literature, culture and language.  Students explore the meanings of the myths and examine the various ways they underlie and shape literary texts. Students will also be exposed to the treatment of Greco-Roman myths in various genres and cultural media, from poetry to prose to visual art.

This course aims to train students in the practice of translation for business and commerce. Students will be introduced to the formats and linguistic features of commercial and financial texts, and to the basic concepts and principles relating to business and commercial translation in both English and Chinese. Through a variety of hands-on tasks, students will acquire and apply specific strategies and techniques to tackle translation problems in various types of business and commercial texts.

This course introduces the linguistic concepts and terms that are relevant to describing and analysing the form and function of different grammatical structures in English. Students will be introduced to corpora for examining and comparing the use of grammar structures in authentic texts. The course will enhance students’ understanding of how grammar contributes to meaningful communication and encourage them to apply their grammatical knowledge and skills to evaluate and improve the quality of English texts.

This course provides a historical overview of English poetry from Shakespearean sonnets to modern poetry. Students will develop the skills to analyse poetic images and decipher literary codes. They will be able to detect the characteristics of different forms of poetry and make use of various critical approaches in their reading. They will relate the poems and critical theories they study to contemporary issues.

This course explores the city in global literature and popular cultural texts through different lenses: economy and class, identity and politics, gender and reproduction, coloniser and colonised. Students will understand the city as both shaping and shaped by socio-cultural forces. Analysis of specific venues - airports, subways, shopping malls, theme parks, heritage sites - will focus the inquiry on major aspects of city culture, everyday experience and ideas about the future of the urban environment.

This course focuses on how the rhetorical features that characterize literary writing are represented in translation. Major types of literary writing will be discussed in class through representative literary works and their translations. Both theoretical issues and practical techniques in literary translation will be introduced. Upon completion of the course, students are expected to be able to translate different literary genres with basic competence and strengthen their language awareness and understanding of literary genres.

This course introduces the major issues in sociolinguistics and examines the relation between language and society. Issues like regional, social and situational language variation, language change, language and culture, language attitudes and identity, language and gender, the social functions of language and language in contact will be discussed.

This course aims to help students develop the confidence and ability to communicate effectively in written English for academic purposes through practice in reading, evaluating and producing academic texts. The course will develop competence in critically analysing academic texts and engaging in the academic writing process, paying attention to communicative purpose, format, accurate use of grammar and vocabulary, and adherence to academic writing conventions. Emphasis will be placed on maintaining academic honesty through effective summarising, paraphrasing, quoting, citing and referencing.

This course introduces students to language in use by demonstrating the diversity of approaches which can be used to describe and explain the structure and function of texts, and how they communicate meaning in different social and situational contexts. Students will be introduced to concepts and methods for describing and analysing written, spoken and visual discourse using authentic examples drawn from a variety of genres. Students will be encouraged to collect and analyse their own data for their assignments.

This course introduces the historical development and thematic context of children’s literature in English. Through examining selected works, including fairy tales, fantasy writing, picture books and other genres, students will acquire an understanding of critical issues related to children’s literature including childhood, identity and audience. Students will also explore key debates related to educational and entertainment purposes, gender stereotypes, multicultural writing, the use of visual language, and adaptations of children’s texts.

This course introduces students to the themes and forms of modernist fiction within their cultural and historical milieus. Students first explore the artistic and intellectual movements and cultural positions of the period (1900 – 1945). They explore the core epistemological question in Modernism (the so-called “crisis of representation”), and then the ideological and psychological significance of modernist experimentations, their narratology, the issue of gender in modernist writing, and the interplay between politics, form and style in selected texts. Students survey the works of major modernist writers, and in the latter part of the course, move towards the limits of the modernist canon which may have heralded the appearance of post-modernist discourse.

This course familiarises students with the multiple relationships between literature and film through in-depth analyses of major literary and cinematic works. It aims to explicate essential differences as well as similarities among literary genres such as novels, drama, and poetry, and their translation onto the screen. Theories of print and media culture respectively will be discussed in order for students to develop a firm grasp of their historically different modes of operation and representation. Issues of adaptation will be highlighted in the juxtaposition of literary ‘original’ with cinematic counterpart. 

This course familiarises students with modern drama and its characteristics. The course will examine a few representative plays from the modern period and survey the major aesthetic and cultural movements of the twentieth century.

This course offers students an opportunity to engage in experiential learning that broadens their social horizons through direct engagement in the workplace. The major aims of the course are to integrate theory and practice by offering students on-the-job training in professional uses of English, translation and communication; provide them with challenging experiential learning through performing roles, tasks and projects in real-world contexts; hone their linguistic, interdisciplinary and transferable skills for a wide range of careers, and help them identify career goals as they relate to their academic studies and future development.

This course introduces the critical issues and concepts of technoscience and explores the elements that constitute technoscience culture. Through study of a body of cultural texts, such as films, T.V. shows, and digital games, the course will highlight the ways in which contemporary technoscience has transformed our everyday life experiences, impacting our sense of identity and subjectivity.

This course introduces the dramatic forms and styles in the Western literary tradition. It explores different approaches to dramatic criticism and draws students’ attention to matters of staging. Students will be able to identify the connection between drama performance and everyday life practices. They will analyse written scripts and the dynamic relationships between the text, body movement, staging devices and cultural references. Through the course, students will develop awareness of drama as one of the earliest forms of literature, how its historical significances and cultural influences have impacted literary development for centuries and how the written script goes beyond words to generates multiple forms of performance.

This course introduces students to interrelations among gender, language and translation.  The course first traces the different stages of research about gender and translation in terms of translation practice, translation history and criticism, and new concepts in translation theory.  It then addresses the various issues within feminist thinking, and the ways they could be incorporated into translation studies.  Students will acquire in-depth knowledge in the emergent common ground among these three areas of studies.

This course provides students with an introduction to contemporary debates on how subjectivities and everyday practices of popular culture take shape in mass society. It also delineates the ways popular culture constitutes a common and important part of our lives. By drawing upon consumer culture, pop music, media, sports, advertisements, films, anime, comics, theme parks etc. this course endeavours to show students that an informal awareness of class, gender and race is essential to any understanding of the sociology of popular cultural practices, both in the West and in Hong Kong. Issues such as postmodernism, identity politics, technoscience and media will be brought to bear on popular cultural texts which are already parts of students’ literacies and practices.

This course helps students acquire English to Chinese and Chinese to English interpreting skills through intensive and rigorous drills in the language laboratory and take home interpretation tasks. In the learning process, great emphasis will be placed on listening comprehension and note taking skills (with short term memory developed in terms of linked thinking and educated guesswork). Particular regard will also be given to sight translation, transcription, glossary building and major principles relating to interpreting in different specific fields. In addition, students will be expected to read relevant academic papers on the topic of interpreting.

This course serves as an introduction to psycholinguistics – the scientific study of language from a psychological point of view. It will examine key issues concerning how language is acquired, represented and processed in the brain, with particular focus on language disorders and language acquisition. Major psychological mechanisms and processes involved in language perception and language production will be covered and experimental research in psycholinguistics will be discussed.

This course offers students an opportunity to engage in experiential learning that broadens their social horizons through direct engagement in the educational workplace. The major aims of the course are to provide students with challenging experiential learning through performing roles, tasks and projects in educational contexts; hone students’ linguistic, interdisciplinary and transferable skills for a wide range of careers in educational institutions, and help students to develop career plans.

This course equips students with the knowledge and skills required to enable learners of English as a second language to develop competence in the use of grammar for communicative purposes. The first part of the course will introduce students to key concepts involved in grammar pedagogy and teaching methodologies. The second part will cover grammatical forms and structures in English that may be particularly difficult for second language learners to acquire, with an emphasis on understanding the connection between form and meaning. Students will apply what they have learned through designing and conducting grammar lessons. By the end of the course, students should feel more confident about the use of grammar terminology in second language teaching and more knowledgeable about a task-based and meaning-oriented approach to grammar teaching in second language classrooms.

This course enables students to gain a comprehensive understanding of how languages are learned, and what major internal and external factors can influence the language learning process. The course introduces important theories and research findings concerning factors affecting both first and second language acquisition. The early developments of second language acquisition (SLA) as a discipline are traced, followed by an examination of individual learner differences that can affect SLA, such as age, intelligence, creativity, language aptitude, mindset, motivation, learning strategies, learner beliefs and social context. Students are expected to reflect upon their own learning experience of English vis-à-vis the theories learned from this course.

This course helps students further develop their English to Chinese and Chinese to English interpreting skills through intensive drills in the language laboratory, take home vocabulary and glossary building tasks and the reading of academic papers by scholars and veteran interpreters about interpreting in specific fields.

This course is an in-depth study of the sound system of English. It examines phonetic and phonological aspects of the English language in order to consolidate the phonetic and phonological knowledge students acquired in their first year linguistics study. It also explores different approaches to the teaching and learning of English pronunciation.

This course is an introduction to the works of William Shakespeare. Through an examination of some representative plays and selected sonnets, students will acquire an appreciation of Shakespeare’s use of language as well as his dramatic treatment of larger themes, such as love, sexuality, politics and identity. Close reading of the texts will be complemented by a discussion of modern critical interpretations and various adaptations of Shakespeare in the past and the contemporary cultural landscape.  

This course enables students to study and appreciate English literary achievements in the Renaissance period. Students will be introduced to major writers and a variety of texts from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries and encouraged to explore, through critical reading of the texts, the characteristic qualities of literary works of the period.

This course equips students with the principles and techniques of translating print and non-print media texts, including press releases, magazine articles, features, film scripts, advertisements and corporate promotional materials. The practical and research skills that are of immediate importance to the translation of media texts will also be introduced with translation examples taken from real-world settings. Upon completion of this course, students should be able to formulate and employ appropriate translation strategies to translate with confidence non-technical media texts from English to Chinese and vice versa, overcoming language and cultural barriers that media texts can present.

This course is a survey of selected American authors representing major periods and movements, from the colonial period to the contemporary era. Texts will be drawn from various genres – poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, graphic novel – and discussed in the light of their historical, cultural and intellectual contexts.   

This course provides a theoretical and historical framework to analyse and reflect upon the relationships between travel and culture through an interdisciplinary approach. Topics discussed include globalization, gender, consumption, theme parks, ecology, heritage and authenticity.  Travel writing will also be emphasised. 

This course introduces the relationships between ecology, culture and literature. After reviewing the nature of ecology and modern ecological concepts such as environmental politics, global crises and animal extinction, issues related to ecological ethics will be discussed. Texts on topics such as cultural geography, environment and social theory, mythology, ecofeminism and the Anthropocene will be explored alongside selected literary works as well as cultural texts such as films and animations.

This course facilitates exploration of interdisciplinary connections within the English Studies domain. The course encourages senior year students to explore connections between the related English Studies disciplines of literature, linguistics, cultural studies and translation they have studied in the first three years of the programme. The course enables students to build an in-depth understanding of the interdisciplinary nature of English Studies through guided discussion and analysis of aspects of the four sub-disciplines that go beyond the foundational concepts they have studied in earlier years.

This course examines how major linguistic theories shed light on translation practices. Students undertake a survey of linguistic theories which have an immediate relevance to the field of translation studies before analysing translation issues from the perspective of the linguistic theories with reference to authentic examples. Upon completion of this course, students are expected to have a better understanding of the relationships between linguistics and translation and be able to formulate effective translation strategies using relevant linguistic theories.

This course develops students’ understanding of translation and translation studies within the framework of globalization. Major translation theories that are related to globalization will be introduced to facilitate students’ grasp of current developments in the field of translation. Major topics include translation paradigm shifts as influenced by globalization, the impact of globalization on translation, translation and hegemony, and the role of modern technology and its influence on the translation industry. Upon completion of this course, students are expected to have gained critical insights and skills enabling them to undertake research in translation studies.

This course focuses on the study of the sound patterns of the English language and the application of phonological rules in the analysis and explanation of the different varieties of English spoken around the world. The attitude of English users and the use of Englishes in post-colonial multilingual societies and internationally will also be discussed in the course.

This course is designed to introduce students to the vast field of contemporary literature in the latter part of the 20^th century and the early part of the 21^st century. Important works originally written in English (with a few translated into English from European languages) are introduced and discussed roughly in chronological order and also in terms of literary critical concepts such as postmodernism, post-colonialism, magical realism, feminist voices and adaptation.

This course introduces both the historical development and narrative structure of science fiction as a unique genre within the context of the postmodernist movement.  Through a body of cultural texts such as short stories, novellas, and sci-fi films, students will be introduced to topics such as alternate history, artificial intelligence, cyberpunk, cloning and genetic engineering, cyborg and posthumanism, nanotechnology and singularity. Critical concepts and theories will also be applied to analyse the texts.

This course provides a focused examination of a selected topic in literary studies. Among possible topics are the following: a specific author, literary movement, historical period, genre, or critical theory; creative writing or literary journalism; an emerging interdisciplinary area such as digital humanities, literature and the other arts, or the graphic novel.      

This course covers the Romantic period in Britain, a period characterized by radical ideas and rebellion against tradition and convention, both in politics and in literature. The syllabus contains a broad selection of texts by the most prominent poets, novelists, and thinkers of the time. The course aims to give students a feel for the ideas it established about poetry, society and nature which are still with us. How the Romantics conceived of literary form and what contemporaneous philosophical ideas they drew upon will also be discussed.

This course focuses on the novels of the Victorian age (c. 1837-1901). It will approach key Victorian novels through issues such as science, industrialization, colonialism, city and poverty, judicial systems and aesthetics. Multiple critical approaches will also be included, such as Romanticism, Social Darwinism, Historicism and Neo-historicism, Aestheticism and Decadence, Gothicism and many more. Students will explore important social, cultural, and intellectual issues of the period and consider how literary writers engaged with the concerns of their time. They will discover how writers depicted the conflicts and collaborations of ideological issues in the vibrant yet turbulent Victorian era. By the end of the course, students will be able to recognize and analyse the intersections between Victorian literature and society and evaluate its continuing significance in the contemporary world.

This course aims to provide students with an understanding of the key concepts in pragmatics, with a particular focus on applications of these concepts to real-life language communications. The course reviews basic pragmatic concepts and theories before discussing issues affecting their application in real-world contexts of communication. The course will focus on issues in pragmatics in English, although reference will be made to relevant features of Cantonese and Mandarin. Additionally, for their group projects students are encouraged to apply pragmatic theories to any of the languages used daily in the Hong Kong context (i.e. English, Cantonese and/or Mandarin).

This course is intended to provide a survey of major translation theories – linguistic, cultural, functional and philosophical. The focus is predominantly on contemporary works in or related to translation studies, with some historical literature providing a necessary context. Major issues of translation theories are identified and discussed with reference to authentic translation texts and/or actual translation practice. Upon completion of the course, students are expected to understand the interdisciplinary nature of translation studies and develop some viable theoretical approaches to analysing translation and its role in cross-cultural communication.

This course equips students with the tools for a more critical understanding of everyday visual experiences. It draws on cultural texts, such as photography, cinema and television, digital media, internet and web images, video and computer games, anime and manga, advertisements, fashion and architecture, as well as visual culture theories to discuss issues ranging from nationality, gender, class, and race, to postmodernism, consumerism, and post-colonialism. With advances in visual and media technologies, society has been increasingly predominated by visual signs and spectacle since the beginning of the 20^th century.