WHILE UNDER BRITISH rule, Hong Kong had the dubious distinction of being one of the few places in the world where not speaking a foreign language fluently was considered a serious social stigma: that language was English.
Ironically, even when Chinese migrate to the west, not speaking English perfectly can seriously affect their careers.
Washington DC has attracted thousands of such immigrants, drawn by the high-paying hi-tech jobs in government and private industry in the nation's capital. Some hail from Hong Kong, others from Taiwan or the mainland. While such newcomers have the technical skills to succeed, their English is rarely perfect and often heavily accented.
That's where American Sharon Heffley comes in. Heffley, who holds a masters degree in speech pathology, had been director of speech and language services for a county health department in Maryland. In 1987, she founded her company, the Accent Modification Centre, which helps people polish their speaking skills.
'This field probably developed with an influx of Asians to the US beginning in the 1970s,' she says. Indeed, according to government figures, more than 2.5 million Asian immigrants entered the US in 1980, a five-fold increase since 1960. In 1990, there were nearly 5 million. Heffley says that during the past two decades many well-educated professionals arriving in the US were unable to secure jobs they were technically qualified for due to poor communication skills.
'They often read and wrote English well when they arrived, but had little opportunity to speak the language,' she says. 'Or they spoke it with a very different English dialect.'