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ABSTRACT
The integration of popular culture into English language learning has recently been formalised in the Hong Kong New Senior Secondary curriculum, with the development of critical reading indicated as one of the key objectives. Whether and how students respond to popular culture texts is, however, under-researched. The present paper reports findings from a study that investigated how a group of 33 senior secondary (Grade 11) students from three schools representing different levels of academic performance in Hong Kong conducted reading of an authentic print English advertisement. In small groups, the students articulated in Cantonese, their first language, an analysis of the text including its purpose, target audience, and intended impacts. Insights from Stuart Hall’s three major decoder positions (dominant reading, oppositional reading, and negotiated reading) were drawn on to conduct a qualitative content analysis of the students’ reading. The findings showed that three-quarters of the students irrespective of their English proficiency levels displayed evidence of critical consumption of the text, but many seemed to have constructed oppositional or negotiated reading positions due to their failure to appreciate linguistic creativity, and spontaneous evaluation of the visual images. The authors argue that language curricula in schools should strengthen students’ critical multimodal literacies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Since 2001, primary school leavers in Hong Kong were roughly categorised into three bands based on students’ internal school results. High performers usually choose English-medium secondary schools which are then labelled as Band 1 schools. In Hong Kong, only about one-fourth of secondary schools adopted English as the medium of instruction for all non-Chinese content subjects across all year levels since the strong enforcement of Chinese-medium education in junior secondary levels in 1998.
2. The project team was unable to find a co-educational high band school because most high band schools in Hong Kong are single sex. Many high band schools we approached did not offer the popular culture elective.
3. As indicated on its business website, the first Fitness First health centre was established in England in 1993. Information on the Hong Kong Trade Development Council website indicates that Fitness First started its establishment in Hong Kong in 1999.
4. The Biggest Loser Asia is the Asian version of the American-based reality TV series ‘The Biggest Loser’. The shows feature how overweight and obese contestants compete for a cash prize through attempts to lose weight, often under the guidance of trainers. Both shows had not been aired in any free TV channels in Hong Kong, even though there was a contestant from Hong Kong. Besides, China Central Television had produced a similar programme with contestants from China.
5. The students were coded with information about the school (B1, B2, B3), two letters from their name (e.g. Ca), English proficiency level (H, M, L), and gender (F, M).
6. Multiple turns from one student in one message unit are acknowledged once only.
7. In Hong Kong, the ability to think from multiple perspectives (多角度思考) is considered evidence of critical thinking, and has been widely promoted in the secondary school curriculum, particularly that of Liberal Studies, a compulsory subject for senior secondary schools since 2009.
8. The construct of intercontexuality denotes the phenomenon that ‘[p]art of the creation of any event involves the construction of relationships between the event and other events’ (Bloome, Carter, Christian, Otto, & Shuart-Faris, Citation2005, p. 44).
9. Whether they were also aware of The Biggest Loser Asia was not explored at the interviews mainly because the researchers were not aware of the Asian version at the time of data collection (November–December 2010).