Title:	Learning English by immersion: Some experience from a learner
Date:	March 23, 2007 (Friday)
Time:	2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Venue:	Room 121, 1/F, Ho Sin-hang Engineering Building, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T.
Speaker:	Prof. Lee Yui-Wah Clement Department of Computer Science and Engineering The Chinese University of Hong Kong

ABSTRACT:

I have a confession to make. When I first arrived at the US in 1996, despite the fact that I have been learning English for some 20 years in Hong Kong, my English proficiency was not good enough for me to fully understand what other people said.

This experience, combined with my other language-learning and -teaching experience, leads me to the conclusion that if students are to learn a foreign language well, they have to immerse themselves into a foreign language environment. This used to mean that they have to live in a foreign country. Fortunately with the advent of various technologies, I believe we may achieve similar results without leaving our home countries. More importantly, we may blend our language studies into entertainment and leisure activities!

In this talk, I am going to share some experience of myself as an English learner (and, to some extent, a French learner). I will talk about various technologies and products including LiveABC, Podcasting, RosettaStone, and something as simple as a DVD player. This talk will contain many demos and examples, not theory. It will be conducted in Putonghua, supplemented by Cantonese and English. This talk is primarily targeted to graduate students, but faculty members are also welcome to share their own experience.

BIOGRAPHY:

Yui-Wah "Clement" Lee received his PhD degree in computer science and engineering from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He was a visiting scholar in Carnegie Mellon University in 1996-1997. Since July 2000, he has been a member of technical staff in Bell Labs, New Jersey, USA. In this academic year (2006/2007), he is taking a year of leave of absence from Bell Labs to teach in CUHK. Dr. Lee has four US patent applications pending for approval, and he is one of key persons behind the USD 950,000 US NSF project Wireless Open Research Kit (WORKIT). Dr. Lee's research interests include systems design and implementation, and wireless and mobile computing. Dr. Lee can be reached by email leecy@bell-labs.com

Enquiries: Miss Temmy So at tel 2609 8444

For more information, please refer to http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/seminar