3. Lam, P., lcpansy @ust.hk, (2000, April). Face Saving Group Work. Paper presented at the annual (Regional Language Centre) International Seminar, Singapore.

This paper examines the relationship between cultures and preferred teaching styles for
undergraduate university students taking English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) courses in Hong Kong. Much of the literature concerning culture and preferred learning styles among Chinese learners in Hong Kong has been done by people from the West, e.g., Hofstede's (1981) four dimensions of defining national cultures: individualism versus collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity versus femininity; Bond's (1986) Chinese value survey; Redding's (1993) collectivism and face; and Biggs (1993) deep and surface learners. Much of this research emphasizes the role of Confucianism and general traits of Chinese. However, the unique cultural, political, and social background of Hong Kong has made the local population a specific, independent group of Chinese.

A questionnaire was administered in six second- and third-year undergraduate EOP classes from the engineering, science and business schools of a Hong Kong university. Ninety-six respondents took part in the survey with a 100% response rate. The 32 questions aimed at investigating if group work is an acceptable learning style among this group of 'Chinese learners.' Responses to the questionnaire items suggest that the majority find working in groups more comfortable and more stimulating in terms of generation of ideas than learning via a teacher-fronted mode. Confidence and language proficiency seem to be related, as one-third indicate that they can speak more fluent English in a small group that in a big class. Most respondents preferred to work with people they know well compared to working with strangers. When a group reports its findings to the class, the majority would give recognition to the group's effort, rather than to individual effort, as group work means collaboration.

The main focus of this research was the aspect of 'face', which to many western writers, is the primary concern of Chinese learners. However, the concept of 'face' seems not to have been a critical issue to the university-age respondents in the present study. The central role of the teacher also appears, based on the findings of this study, to have diminished, in contrast to what some Western writers have said about power distance and Chinese learners.

From the Journals

The first three abstracts are from articles by the same two researchers. They describe a strategy for teaching reading, and report research on use of the strategy with second language learners. Here, and elsewhere in this section, an asterisk indicates that the abstract did not appear with the original article.

The contact information for the first author is: Janette Klingner, University of Miami, School of Education, P.O. Box 248065, Coral Gables, FL33124-2040, Tel: 1-305-284-5937, jkklingner@aol.com