Knowledge Transfer
We collaborate and exchange ideas with academics and practitioners in professional communities and nurture the learners in professional commmunication.
"TALKING ACROSS THE WORLD" Symposium: Post-covid Reflections on English language communication at work
20 May 2022 - Organized by the Research Centre for Professional Communication in English (RCPCE), Department of English and Communication, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
This TAW2022 Symposium queries ‘What are the implications of a post-covid world of work for business and professional communication?’ Specifically, we look at the impact of the pandemic on professional communication in three areas, namely, communication and teaching in schools, workplace communication in corporations, and external business communication like marketing and customer service. The symposium brings together workplace practitioners (teachers, school/business management, marketing experts) and academics in these areas to problematise key issues; to report on studies and workplace initiatives already in action; and collaboratively, to set an agenda for professional and business communication research going forward.
Joint Workshop on Linguistics and Language Processing (JWLLP)
4 June 2021 - RCPCE and the HK PolyU-PKU Research Centre on Chinese Linguistics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University hosted the 29th Joint Workship on Linguistics and Language Processing online. The workshop had 17 lectures with a special panel on the "Metaphor/Mediator: Persuasion, Power and Privilege". We are honoured to have Prof. Christian Burgers to deliver a keynote to our participants.
Please click here for the workshop website.
"TALKING ACROSS THE WORLD" Symposium: Professional Communication in the Digital Age
21 May 2021 - Organized by the Research Centre for Professional Communication in English (RCPCE), Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, with support from the Hong Kong Customer Contact Association (HKCCA).
TAW2021 invited ten speakers from three specialisms in professional communication: research, teaching and practising. The AM and PM panel discussions indicated a gap between practitioners and academia on the specification and requirements of professional communication competence and training.
Five (5) recorded lectures had been uploaded to the ENGL PolyU YouTube channel for the public (with the consent of the speakers).
Please click here for the symposium website.
Contagious Words/Epidemic Behaviours: Language Big Data Approaches to COVID-19
17 October 2020 - The Hong Kong Polytechnic University – Peking University Research Centre on Chinese Linguistics. Please click here for the workshop website.
Career and Professional Development Series: Practicing Managing Stress
20 May 2020 - A joint online seminar by RCPCE and the Hong Kong Customer Contact Association. Please check the seminar poster for more information.
Spinning the discourse roulette: addressing poverty of data with Monte Carlo simulations
11 May 2020 - A joint online seminar by Department of English and Research Centre for Professional communication in English. Please check the seminar poster for more information.
Source Domain Verification for Conceptual Metaphor Analysis
21 April 2020 - A joint online seminar by Department of English and Research Centre for Professional communication in English. For more information, Please check the seminar poster for more information.
FinNLP workshop in conjunction with IJCAI-2019
12 August, 2019 - Team of researchers from Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies (CBS), Department of Computing (COMP), Department of English (ENGL) and School of Accounting and Finance (AF) will participate in the Financial Technologies NLP workshop in conjunction with IJCAI-2019 and present our method to solve the shared task for sentence boundary detection in PDF noisy text in the financial domain (FinSBD). More information can be found on the FinSBD shared-task website.
16th International Pragmatics Conference
14 June, 2019 - Research Centre for Professional Communication in English (RCPCE) co-sponsored the 16th International Pragmatics Conference (#IPrA2019) which was hosted on 9-14 June 2019 at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The conference is a biannual international linguistics event organised by the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA). The 16th International Pragmatics Conference was hosted by the Department of English (ENGL), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and was attended with over 950 scholars from 55 countries and regions.
“TALKING ACROSS THE WORLD” Symposium - Communication Skills in Hong Kong and Regional Contact Centres
16 May, 2019 - The Department of English (ENGL) and the Research Centre for Professional Communication in English (RCPCE) is proud to host the “TALKING ACROSS THE WORLD” Symposium - Communication Skills in Hong Kong and Regional Contact Centres in The Hong Kong Polytechnic University on 16 May 2019. Our Associate Director Dr. Jane Lockwood and ten invited speakers from Call Centres in Hong Kong and experts in communication shared their insight in Call Centre services to the forty participants. We would like to thank the Hong Kong Call Centre Association (HKCCA) and Future Perfect for their support of this event.
Co-sponsoring the Hong Kong Linguistic Olympiad
14 April, 2019 - The Department of English (ENGL) and the Research Centre for Professional Communication in English (RCPCE) is proud to co-sponsor the Hong Kong Linguistic Olympiad. Professor Kathleen Ahrens, ENGL Professor and RCPCE Director gave a talk at the award ceremony on April 14th, 2019 and encouraged high school students to continue to aim high in their linguistic endeavors.
Vocational College, Universitas Gadjah Mada visited RCPCE
8 April, 2019 - Mr. Ahmad Maum and his team from the Vocational College, Universitas Gadjah Mada visited RCPCE on 8 April, 2019. We are happy to share our ideas and practices on how laboratories support research activities.
Cross-Disciplinary Roundtable Workshop
4 April, 2019 - Our Centre Director Professor Kathleen Ahrens shared her research on the one-day Cross-Disciplinary Roundtable Workshop jointly organised with the School of Accounting and Finance, the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies and the Department of English of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
The aim of the workshop is to exchange research ideas and practices across disciplines and initiate interdisciplinary collaboration, and share disciplinary specific research knowledge with our PhD students.
IB Student Internship
16 November 2018 - Mr. Mike Cai, a Year 11 student who is studying at Renaissance College Hong Kong, finished his internship in November 2019 under the supervision of our Project Associate Mr. Amos Yung.
Mike assisted RCPCE to write a short report on the technical terms used in Hong Kong financial sector with the corpus linguistics software 'ConcGram' developed in the Department of English in 2008.
Digital and Virtual Workplace Communication
27 April, 2018 - Our Associate Director Dr. Jane Lockwood and our PhD student Ms. Carol Yu shared their research findings in workplace studies and revealed why English language communication breaks down in a range of virtual settings and what communication strategies may lead to improvements.
The seminar was attended by around 40 participants in this seminar.
International Conference on ESP, New Technologies and Digital Learning
7-9 December, 2017 - The International Conference on ESP, New Technologies and Digital Learning was successfully held from 7 – 9 December at PolyU. About 220 participants from 22 countries/regions joined the conference and there were 154 presentations delivered by 185 presenters. Prof. Vijay Bhatia, Prof. Rod Ellis, Prof. Diane Pecorari, Prof. Bernadette Watson, and Dr Beata Webb each gave a keynote speech. Four of the keynote speeches can be viewed at ENGL YouTube channel.
The conference aims to bring together teachers, researchers and students in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) to contribute to a stimulating and dynamic exchange of ideas in ESP, new technologies and digital learning. We hope the event gave a fruitful experience to the participants and offered them a platform to network with people with same interest in the fields. We would like to thank those who participated and made the conference successful!