A Tale of Two Classes: Language Issues in Teaching Civil Engineering

Abstract

The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Sun Yat-Sen University (SYSU) of Guangzhou started offering a joint 4-year Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) Program in Civil Engineering in September 2005. The joint program is of the ‘2+2 mode’ in which students spend two years first in SYSU and then the last two years in HKU. On completion of the program, a student gets a diploma from SYSU and a BEng degree from HKU. A special feature of this joint program is that all engineering courses in SYSU are taught in English. The courses in HKU, apart from those on Chinese language, are also taught in English. To ensure continuity, four courses in the first two years in SYSU are taught by HKU staff. So far the students recruited into this joint program have come from Guangdong Province, and they have been taught using Chinese as the medium of instruction before entering university. In the corresponding 3-year BEng program in Civil Engineering in HKU, most students have had English as the medium of instruction before entering university. Surveys have been carried out on the two classes in the joint 4-year program and the regular 3-year program that take the core course ‘Theory and Design of Structures I’. This paper then examines various language issues in the teaching of civil engineering as well as the study habits of students from the two places.