Combating the English literary crisis through Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC): a case study at the Associate Degree (AD) level at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) College of International Education (CIE)

Students' apprehensiveness towards English writing is a growing trend that can no longer be ignored - a concern raised by many frontline teachers. Recent studies at CIE on students' dispositions towards assessments have shown students' increasing preference for assessment methods with little or no essay writing component. Using writing as a mode of learning, as a way of ordering and building knowledge or as a form of critical thinking has become ever more difficult in practice. At HKBU CIE, initiatives have been taken to combat this "crisis". Much support has since been garnered for a WAC movement at CIE. On the College level, policies like restricting the number of MC questions and making room for more open-ended essay-type questions, are in place. On the pedagogical level, there is an ongoing dialogue between language teachers and teachers across disciplines on inter alia, the design of graded and non-graded writing tasks, workshops on reading journals and process writing in the disciplines. On the assessment level, the inclusion of language use has been looked into in essay assessments. Pairing of “writing” with “experiential learning” has also come along. Quantitative and qualitative data on the effectiveness of the CIE WAC movement shall be discussed.