In the past 20 years, I have been teaching tertiary level English language and communication to post-grad research students and undergrad students from over 20 departments of various disciplines (including health technology and informatics, business and management, health and social sciences, engineering and building services, environment studies and land survey). This helps develop not only my pedagogic sensitivity, but also my general knowledge of a wide range of disciplines to some extent. Through analyzing research related academic and scientific writing, my students and I benefit from each other in two interwoven aspects of quality: the quality of language and communication and the quality of discipline related research work.
For more than 5 years, I was a member of the Quality Assurance Committee/Staff Development Committee of the English Language Centre I work with, and I am currently Chairman of the Learning and Teaching Committee of the Centre. The duties of these two committees include staff appraisal, quality assurance and continuous improvement of subjects and curricula and the related formal documentation work. I have completed several educational projects most of which were funded by the University. From 2008 to 2011, for example, I was Leader of a funded research project aimed to evaluate the effects of the inter-departmental collaboration between a discipline department and the English Language Centre on the quality of student performances and related aspects in the milieu of outcome-based approach to education. External professionals from the discipline concerned were invited to assess students’ performances. This project has been a very valuable experience for developing QA sensitivity in discipline specific language education