Students apply communication skills to link people and the community

A total of 20 masterpieces demonstrating the professional skills in English communication, public relation, marketing, and writing of the final-year students of Associate of Arts English for Professional Communication (AAEPC) are on display from 14 to 16 April.

 

 

The theme of the project competition was “Communication links: people to community”.  Ms Wanda Lau, Acting Head of CityU’s Division of Language Studies (LS), said, “We believe that communication is about people relating to each other and this is reflected in the projects our students have undertaken. The variety of projects, and the variety of host organizations that our students worked with, reflects the diversity of the communities that make up Hong Kong. While they may be diverse, the one thing that links these people and communities is communication.” She added, “Many projects are about members of the community who have been neglected or discriminated. Our students have used their communication skills to provide links between these people and organizations and the communities that surround them.”

 

At the opening ceremony of the exhibition, Dr Rosanna Wong, Chairman of the Education Commission, extended congratulation to all graduate students and encouraged them to continue pursuit of knowledge in university or workplace. She pointed out that in order to be competitive in the society, students have to equip themselves with three attitudes: depth of knowledge, high degree of professionalism, and competency in English. She said, “Professionalism is more than simply having a qualification. Being professional in whatever fields, it means that you are committing yourself and maintaining highest standard with integrity”.

 

Other officiating guests included Mr Chiu Tat-wing, Managing Director of Unison Orient International Limited; Professor Lilian Vrijmoed, Dean of Student Learning, CityU; and Ms Jennifer Ng, Principal of the Community College of City University of Hong Kong.

 

The “Project of the Year” awards went to two teams this year. They were “UTH Orchestras 4 YO” and “See the Blind, Feel the Shine” Campaign.

 

"I've been judging this competition for six years and I'm always impressed by the standard of English and the quality of the projects that I see. But this year we saw something exceptional. The standards were higher than ever--so high that we found it impossible to select a single winner. So, for only the second time in the history of this competition, we had to award project of the year to two teams.” said the Chair panel judge, the famous novelist Nury Vittachi. “The communication skills used by all members of the winning teams were extremely good, and their projects were of a standard that any professional communicator would be proud of."

 

One of the winning projects, “UTH Orchestras 4 YO” was completed by Blu Lai, Heidi Lam and Dominica Yung. Their host organization was “Youth Outreach” and their project was to organize a fund-raising concert at Wei Hing Threatre, City University of Hong Kong.

 

“As the event organizers, we wrote to patrons for donation, sought sponsors to support the concert and invited companies to put advertisements to draw donation.” said Heidi Lam. “We also got the support of Mr. Joseph Wong, the creator of “Old Master Q” to design printed materials for the concert.”      

 

The other winning project, “See the Blind, Feel the Shine Campaign”, jointly produced by Maggie Tam, Arena Luk, Grace Ho and Connie Kwan, aims to raise funds for the  “Hong Kong Society for the Blind” (HKSB). The fund-raising events included organizing visits for primary students to the centre of HKSB, Braille calendar drawing competition, Braille keychain fundraising charity event and an open day.

 

The AAEPC provides students with the knowledge and skills they need to be effective communicators in English. It also provides a good foundation in business studies, communication theory and practice, and communication technology.

 

The exhibition is held at the Purple Zone Atrium of the AcademicBuilding from 14 to 16 April, daily from 10am – 7pm.