Ken Lau
Biographic Data
| ID | 3721617 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ken Lau |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ken |
| FAMILY NAME | Lau |
| SIGNATURE | LAU K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Hong Kong |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8065-0975 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 30 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Metadiscourse in postgraduate thesis supervisions at UK and Taiwanese universities
This study investigates metadiscourse in master's thesis supervisions at universities in the UK and Taiwan, an established yet underexplored academic spoken genre that functions as a vital mechanism for effective research management and support, particularly within increasingly diverse cohorts of national and international students. Drawing on Hyland's interpersonal model, a self-compiled corpus of over 34,000 words of authentic supervisory inter…
Writing economics
This qualitative case study explores the nuanced and complex writing experience of a multilingual master's student at an English medium instruction (EMI) university in Hong Kong. Drawing on the discussion in translingual writing, this study investigates how the student writer engages with a multilingual repertoire in disciplinary writing and balances the divergent discourses. Through rich narratives and written artifacts collected over her one-ye…
Learning Styles
It has been widely acknowledged in the education and psychology literature that no two distinct learners would acquire knowledge in precisely the same way. The habitual and preferred way of how a learner acquires, processes, and retains new knowledge and skills has given rise to one's “learning style”. Compared with a similar concept learning preferences learning style , in general, is considered relatively deep‐rooted and enduring across setting…
“I found it very special and interesting”
‘I am just saying maybe …’
The orientation toward a knowledge-based economy has led to the increasing need to pursue advanced degrees to further improve one’s competitiveness in society. Research on postgraduate programs has thus sparked interest from multiple perspectives, among which, generated written artifacts such as dissertations have become the center of attention. However, dissertation defenses (DDs), i.e., the oral output, seem to have not been given due attention…
Pragmatic functions of I think in computer-mediated, cross-cultural communication between Taiwanese and Japanese undergraduate students
This study explores the functions of I think in synchronous, computer-mediated cross-cultural communication of Japanese and Taiwanese university students. The data used in this study were collected from the Cross-Cultural Distance Learning corpus, which contains transcriptions of recorded synchronous spoken and written interactions between Taiwanese and Japanese university students. To examine the functions of I think , occurrences of the phrase …
Disciplinary variations in learning styles and preferences
Feeding the flock
Wildlife is persisting in urban areas of Australia even though white settler colonialism has resulted in the large-scale destruction of forested landscapes. While many bird species are in decline, the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo has found emergent opportunities for flourishing within the built environment. Cockatoos are actively generating relationally constituted spaces, drawing humans into urban ecosystems that are 'more-than-human' places, abunda…
‘The most important thing is to learn the way to learn’
The mission of universities today is not only to nurture experts in various professions, but also to cultivate lifelong autonomous learners. Independent learning and pedagogies that aim to foster learner autonomy have grown in importance over the past decade. However, the extent to which independent learning is successful in fostering autonomy has not been fully addressed; nor has a robust method for evaluating independent learning been available…
One international university, two perspectives
Internationalisation of higher education greatly facilitates cross-border student mobility, which has been extensively researched. This comparative study focuses on the relatively under-explored field of intra-regional educational mobility. It compares attitudes towards learning and using English of M ainland Chinese students and Hong Kong Chinese students while studying side-by-side at an English-medium university in Hong Kong. Using a mixed met…
Assessing reflection in English enhancement courses
The debate about whether and how reflection should/can be assessed has so far yielded inconclusive findings. This paper intends to revisit and further this controversial issue within a specific disciplinary context: the assessment of reflection in English enhancement courses within a second-language environment. Students across majors taking the language enhancement courses in question are often required to provide written or verbal evidence to d…
Feeding the flock
Wildlife is persisting in urban areas of Australia even though white settler colonialism has resulted in the large-scale destruction of forested landscapes. While many bird species are in decline, the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo has found emergent opportunities for flourishing within the built environment. Cockatoos are actively generating relationally constituted spaces, drawing humans into urban ecosystems that are 'more-than-human' places, abunda…
One international university, two perspectives
Internationalisation of higher education greatly facilitates cross-border student mobility, which has been extensively researched. This comparative study focuses on the relatively under-explored field of intra-regional educational mobility. It compares attitudes towards learning and using English of M ainland Chinese students and Hong Kong Chinese students while studying side-by-side at an English-medium university in Hong Kong. Using a mixed met…
Disciplinary variations in learning styles and preferences
Assessing reflection in English enhancement courses
The debate about whether and how reflection should/can be assessed has so far yielded inconclusive findings. This paper intends to revisit and further this controversial issue within a specific disciplinary context: the assessment of reflection in English enhancement courses within a second-language environment. Students across majors taking the language enhancement courses in question are often required to provide written or verbal evidence to d…
‘The most important thing is to learn the way to learn’
The mission of universities today is not only to nurture experts in various professions, but also to cultivate lifelong autonomous learners. Independent learning and pedagogies that aim to foster learner autonomy have grown in importance over the past decade. However, the extent to which independent learning is successful in fostering autonomy has not been fully addressed; nor has a robust method for evaluating independent learning been available…
One international university, two perspectives
Internationalisation of higher education greatly facilitates cross-border student mobility, which has been extensively researched. This comparative study focuses on the relatively under-explored field of intra-regional educational mobility. It compares attitudes towards learning and using English of M ainland Chinese students and Hong Kong Chinese students while studying side-by-side at an English-medium university in Hong Kong. Using a mixed met…
Disciplinary variations in learning styles and preferences
Feeding the flock
Wildlife is persisting in urban areas of Australia even though white settler colonialism has resulted in the large-scale destruction of forested landscapes. While many bird species are in decline, the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo has found emergent opportunities for flourishing within the built environment. Cockatoos are actively generating relationally constituted spaces, drawing humans into urban ecosystems that are 'more-than-human' places, abunda…
Pragmatic functions of I think in computer-mediated, cross-cultural communication between Taiwanese and Japanese undergraduate students
This study explores the functions of I think in synchronous, computer-mediated cross-cultural communication of Japanese and Taiwanese university students. The data used in this study were collected from the Cross-Cultural Distance Learning corpus, which contains transcriptions of recorded synchronous spoken and written interactions between Taiwanese and Japanese university students. To examine the functions of I think , occurrences of the phrase …
“I found it very special and interesting”
‘I am just saying maybe …’
The orientation toward a knowledge-based economy has led to the increasing need to pursue advanced degrees to further improve one’s competitiveness in society. Research on postgraduate programs has thus sparked interest from multiple perspectives, among which, generated written artifacts such as dissertations have become the center of attention. However, dissertation defenses (DDs), i.e., the oral output, seem to have not been given due attention…
Learning Styles
It has been widely acknowledged in the education and psychology literature that no two distinct learners would acquire knowledge in precisely the same way. The habitual and preferred way of how a learner acquires, processes, and retains new knowledge and skills has given rise to one's “learning style”. Compared with a similar concept learning preferences learning style , in general, is considered relatively deep‐rooted and enduring across setting…
Writing economics
This qualitative case study explores the nuanced and complex writing experience of a multilingual master's student at an English medium instruction (EMI) university in Hong Kong. Drawing on the discussion in translingual writing, this study investigates how the student writer engages with a multilingual repertoire in disciplinary writing and balances the divergent discourses. Through rich narratives and written artifacts collected over her one-ye…
Metadiscourse in postgraduate thesis supervisions at UK and Taiwanese universities
This study investigates metadiscourse in master's thesis supervisions at universities in the UK and Taiwan, an established yet underexplored academic spoken genre that functions as a vital mechanism for effective research management and support, particularly within increasingly diverse cohorts of national and international students. Drawing on Hyland's interpersonal model, a self-compiled corpus of over 34,000 words of authentic supervisory inter…
Psychology (8 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Pedagogy (6 works) · Linguistics (5 works) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (4 works) · Mathematics education (4 works) · Second Language Learning and Teaching (4 works) · Discipline (3 works) · Higher education (3 works)