Dubious English test

The pass rate of the language proficiency assessment for teachers, formerly known as the benchmark assessment, has been below 30 per cent since the test's institution in 2001 ('Teachers fail to make the grade in language tests', December 19).

So many teachers have failed simply because the standard set for proficiency has been pitched unrealistically high. The test's validity is doubtful when most of the candidates are labelled as inadequate, whereas many of the so-called failures can be reasonably effective primary and lower form English teachers.

Looking at a sample paper on writing, one realises that the proficiency asked for is, in fact, what can be rightfully asked only of professors, mid-level managers of big international business houses and administrative and executive officers in government. Is that fair?

When the assessment was conceived, the professors who wrote the sample exam papers had no responsibility for administration, nor were they told in concrete terms how it was going to be administered. Had they been informed that the assessment was to be superimposed on the teaching licence of English teachers in government and subsidised primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong, they would have been more sensitive to the connotation of the term 'benchmark'.

In 2000-2001, as a consultant to research on the teaching strategies of the English and Chinese languages in the nine years of free and compulsory education, I had the opportunity to visit and be stationed in the English classrooms of more than 20 primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Tianjin. My observation: good English teaching at primary and junior secondary levels does not require an achievement of near-native proficiency as much as an ability to teach stories and convey simple socialising situations within the daily experience of the students.

Another observation is that the success of English-language teaching at these two levels depends more on the activeness and friendliness of the teacher than on an advanced knowledge in pedagogical grammar, and definitely not on whether he or she has advanced skills in business writing. In other words, if ability to teach is the chief objective of benchmarking, the validity of the assessment is dubious. Its usefulness as an indicator of where teachers should try to improve their effectiveness and efficiency is also seriously in doubt.