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- Find out about the students' interest through a simple survey or questionnaire so you can purchase and suggest relevant materials for students. Books made into a movie (e.g. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) or books developed out of a movie (e.g. Home Alone) are generally well received by Hong Kong teenagers.
- Work with the school librarians to come up with a list of book recommendations with the indication of relative levels of difficulty based on texts already available in the school library or texts that are easily accessible from the public library. Easy access to such texts can encourage more reading.
- if funding is available, purchase copies of books and movies from the HKEAA's lists of recommended texts and/or take students out to bookstores so they can select and recommend books for purchasing.
- A wide range of reading materials should be easily accessible to students, please refer to the HKEAA's lists of recommended texts for the school-based assessment component for reference. Other readings can also come from newspapers, magazines, CD-ROMs, websites, etc.
- Get support from parents. Many of them might be willing to donate used DVDs (as non-print texts) which are suitable for the SBA. Encourage older students, family and friends to donate books they have read and enjoyed to the S4/S5 classes.
- When selecting films or documentaries, choose something relevant to students' life experiences and interest. Consider the appropriateness of content, density, pace, level and clarity of language: films that contain a very heavy dialect or regional accents (e.g. some Hollywood movies), or old English (e.g. Shakespeare remains difficult even with some adaptations) might hinder students' comprehension (Sherman, 2003). Films with conventional story lines: children's film drama (e.g. Babe, Finding Nemo); epics (e.g. Titanic, Jurassic Park) and science-fiction drama (e.g. Close Encounters, Star Wars) are more attractive to young people.
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 To view Ms Wendy Leung, SBA Project, The University of Hong Kong, talking about issues of text selection. |
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