Abstract
This article examines an established course on Popular Culture which is framed within the general educational model in an English-medium university. The article is organized into three parts: the underlining educational rationale for general educational courses, the course description and the students’ perspectives of their learning experience. This course aims primarily to develop students’ abilities to analyse critical issues and approaches in the study of popular culture. Both locally and globally situated popular cultural references are used in this course to motivate students to think and learn beyond their immediate popular cultural practices. We problematize issues that have arisen in the course such as pedagogy, language, culture and agency and discuss the implications these have for developing and teaching such courses in a multicultural higher-education environment, enabling more critical analysis by students as second language learners.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Anne Pierson-Smith
Anne Peirson-Smith is an assistant professor in the Department of English, City University of Hong Kong. She teaches and researches fashion culture and communication, popular culture, public relations and branding. She is currently researching youth fashion style in South East Asia and has published various articles on the Cosplay phenomenon and youth style. She is the co-author of the book Public Relations in Asia Pacific: Communicating Effectively Across Cultures (2010), New York: John Wiley and the co-author of Global Fashion Brands: Style, Luxury & History (2014), Bristol: Intellect.
Alice Chik
Alice Chik is an assistant professor at the Department of English, City University of Hong Kong. Her main research areas include autonomy in learning, narrative research, new media and popular culture in second language education. Her recent articles on young people and digital practices are published in TESOL Quarterly, Language Learning & Technology and Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education. She is the co-editor of Popular Culture, Pedagogy and Teacher Education: International Perspectives (Routledge, 2014).
Lindsay Miller
Lindsay Miller is an associate professor in the Department of English at City University of Hong Kong. He designs and teaches ESP undergraduate courses and postgraduate courses on learner autonomy and pedagogy. His main areas of research focus on self-access language learning and academic listening. He has published Establishing Self-Access: From Theory To Practice (with D. Gardner, 1999), Cambridge University Press; Second Language Listening: Theory and Practice (with J. Flowerdew, 2005), Cambridge University Press and Managing Self-Access Language Learning (with D. Gardner, 2014) CityU Press.