Committed to bringing social changes, faculty members of CityU’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences always work with different sectors of society to disseminate knowledge and provide inputs to the collaborators’ real-life situations. Dr Jack PUN of CityU’s Department of English (EN) has recently engaged in three events, in which he shared his insights into the integration of language immersion pedagogy into the current curriculum, trained health workers to use a software application to conduct qualitative analysis, and introduced effective clinical communication strategies to future doctors, respectively. 

The language immersion pedagogy sharing was meaningful not only because it allowed practical pedagogical knowledge to be transferred to educators, but it was also an occasion for Dr Pun to give back to his alma mater, CCC Chuen Yuen College. During the Professional Development Day at the secondary school where he studied, Dr Pun raised the importance of making meaningful interactions. He suggested that at the initial stage of implementing English-medium education, teachers can incorporate translanguaging into their teaching. With the assistance of their first language, students are likely to feel empowered to interact with teachers and enhance their English learning experience. He also shared some strategies to encourage students’ participation, such as prompting students’ responses with close-ended questions, inviting one to two students to share their answers at one time, and dropping the language boundary. The session was well-received by the teachers as it could help countless secondary school students’ English learning. The school is also looking forward to partaking in Dr Pun’s upcoming projects, which are dedicated to uplifting various aspects of English proficiency in secondary school students.

The qualitative research workshop was conducted with the Hospital Authority New Territories West Cluster to train 23 healthcare staff to use NVivo, a qualitative analysis computer software. It commenced with a brief introduction to qualitative research and data analysis, during which Dr Pun invited participating frontline clinicians from departments such as Geriatric and Accidents and Emergency to share their experiences in conducting interviews and structured observations. Then, the participants were taught the basic functions of NVivo through demonstrations, video sharing, step-by-step instructions and hands-on practice. The participants were eager to learn the software and qualitative research and found the interactive workshop beneficial to their clinical research.

The clinical communication and handover presentation was organised for 30 future oncologists at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. It aimed to provide an overview of clinical communication in the Hong Kong context for the medical students, as well as sharing strategies and communication models that they can utilise for improving clinical communication. It was commenced with an overview of clinician-patient communication in the East Asia context and followed by the ISBAR and CARE protocol for organising and engaging in verbal communication during clinical handover. The presentation was well-received by the participants for being “full of energy, wisdom and clarity”. The organiser believed that it could help nurture the next generation of doctors who will care for patients with cancer.

Cover photo: Dr Pun actively reaches out to the local community to share knowledge for society’s benefit.