Ill-founded argument against NETs belongs in kindergarten playground I would like to thank Professor Linda Siegel, 'All very well to study English, but first you've got to speak it', (Education Post, July 14) for her professional opinions concerning the teaching of English in Hong Kong schools, particularly when children first begin learning English. Professor Siegel correctly points out that contrary to what research tells us about language learning, many local schools place too much emphasis 'on written work and dictation'. In particular, Professor Siegel cites the importance of teaching 'phonological awareness skills', which she defines as 'learning to listen to language and to break it down into individual sounds'. She explains that this would entail teaching children to identify rhymes, word-initial sounds and word-final sounds, reminding us that research has shown 'that these skills help children learn to read'. Essentially, what Professor Siegel has done for Native English-speaking teachers working in Hong Kong schools is to add validity to the arguments that many of us have been making over the years. Some of us have been rather successful at convincing our colleagues that teaching 'phonological awareness' and 'letter-sound correspondence', while at the same time de-emphasising 'memorised' or 'seen' dictations, helps our students become more skilful readers of English. Unfortunately, Professor Siegel then goes on to discredit the NET Scheme on the basis of its impracticality and to advocate another idea originally proposed by former Permanent Secretary of Education and Manpower, Fanny Law Fan Chiu-fun: send Native Chinese-speaking kindergarten teachers from Hong Kong to Vancouver for three months to observe teaching methods in Canadian kindergarten classrooms. Why Professor Siegel thinks this alternative is practical in comparison to the NET scheme is hard to fathom. The majority of kindergartens in Hong Kong are private money-making institutions outside the auspices of the Education Bureau. Furthermore, many kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong have no teaching qualifications at all. If they have learned English in Hong Kong, they have most likely learned it in the same way that they teach it, via massive amounts of written work and dictation beginning at an early age, relying on 'visual memorisation skills' over 'phonological awareness skills'. In all fairness, perhaps some pre-primary teachers in Hong Kong could benefit from such a scheme but if implemented on a large scale, what would the costs be? Would the costs really outweigh the benefits, as Professor Siegel suggests? I find this hard to believe, given the nature of pre-primary education in Hong Kong. Even if such a scheme could work on a large scale in Hong Kong's kindergartens, would this necessitate the end of the NET Scheme? Ending the NET Scheme would be a disservice to students who are serious about learning English. With all due respect, instead of knocking NETs down to sell books or university courses overseas, what the leading academics in Hong Kong could do is to support the work that we are doing on the front lines so that our qualifications and experiences can be most effectively utilised for the benefit of students in Hong Kong schools. STEPHEN COOLEY, Ma On Shan Alternative to scheme is flood of Chinglish The gist of Linda Siegel's contribution boils down to 'studying is a waste of time since you can better learn English orally'. I know that NETs have to justify their role in society and schools but there ought to be found more convincing arguments than such simplistic (and erroneous) ones. Her first mistake was to compare the acquisition of a second language (L2) in the classroom with how students master their mother tongue. While her observation that parents pass down their language to their offspring is not wrong, the conclusion that any L2 must follow the same path is quite misleading. The child's thinking has been grounded in his or her first language. Hence using the L2 orally from the start is a utopian expectation. By learning any language a child learns how to think. The thinking processes are reflected differently in every language. Professor Siegel mentioned grammar. English grammar is very abstract and abstract thinking defines how all Indo-European languages operate. This is in stark contrast to Chinese or Korean. Speaking and thinking in a foreign language must occur simultaneously or else we get 'mixed signals' in the target language. This is a phenomenon readily observable in the flood of Chinglish. Her suggestion that children 'learn to speak English' before they actually understand it must be rejected. ROGER BEAUD, Guangdong Poll on rankings, rank in its own way 'Work Ethic Lacking in Hong Kong Graduates' (Education Post, July 27) indicated that the results of the poll carried out partly by Hong Kong University placed Lingnan University at the lowest rank. I'm surprised that HKU feels insecure and so threatened by a university such as Lingnan that is has to associate itself with this spurious poll and to publish the results in the week when students are considering offers of university places. The poll or survey is indeed spurious, as was already pointed out last year, because it relies heavily on a telephone poll of public opinion for its rankings, and considers the total research output of the universities without taking into account staff numbers. As Lingnan is the latest publicly-funded university to be established, public opinion has not caught up with reality and will be bound to favour the older universities. Moreover, Lingnan as the smallest of the eight institutions, with 2,000 undergraduates and an academic staff of 150 or so cannot be expected to produce as much research as HKU with eight times as many staff. A more accurate gauge would come from the UGC's painstaking Research Assessment Exercise where Lingnan came 4th after the three research intensive universities. And from the Hong Kong Economic Journal's more principled survey where Lingnan was ranked first in teaching quality. Last year a student with excellent first year grades from my department at Lingnan transferred to HKU to study the same subject. I am told he regretted the impersonal atmosphere at HKU and that the lecturers had relatively little time for him compared with Lingnan. This year I acted as external examiner of a PhD at, according to the poll, one of the most prestigious universities in Hong Kong. One internal member of the examinations board fell asleep during the student's presentation and another, to judge from his questions, apparently had not read the thesis and had no idea what hypothesis the student was trying to test. I can assure you that standards at Lingnan are higher than that. PROFESSOR ANDREW GOATLY, Sha Tin Education Mailbag
