A PROPOSAL THAT SETS ambitious targets to boost language standards among Hong Kong students has been largely welcomed by educators and employers. But it has also provoked criticism over its failure to address the workload shouldered by language teachers.
The Action Plan to Raise Language Standards in Hong Kong released last week by the government's advisory body on language policy, the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (Scolar), recommends benchmarks be set to assess biliterate and trilingual ability at five key stages in primary and secondary schools. Students should be given absolute scores rather than grades relative to their counterparts to reflect their true performance.
The consultation document also recommends that Chinese and English teachers be required to have both a degree in the relevant language as well as teacher training.
Despite being vague on how language proficiency shapes up today compared with the past, committee chairman Michael Tien Puk-sun stressed that people had to 'face reality'.
'The spirit of the document is to ask Hong Kong people not to lie to themselves. We have to let everybody know what language standard we have to achieve and how much we have achieved. If there is a huge discrepancy between the two, we have to set a time frame to tackle the problem,' he said. The aim of the committee was to achieve a 100 per cent pass rate in A-level language subjects, he added.
What is generally agreed among educators is that the Curriculum Development Council should set benchmarks for students to achieve at the end of the five key stages of schooling - Primary Three and Six, and Secondary Three, Five and Seven.