Advertisement

Where to go for an early start

Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0

UNTIL recently, expatriate children growing up in Hong Kong had little chance to learn Chinese at international schools. Today, an increasing number of these schools expose pupils to Cantonese or Mandarin from kindergarten level, the best time to start.

Such schools are particularly popular with Chinese who have returned from abroad, but are also sought after for the children of mixed marriages and a minority of Western expatriates.

The most popular is the Chinese International School, the only school that attempts to give equal weight to English and Mandarin. But with over 300 applicants for just 75 places in its reception classes, the school has become notoriously difficult to getin to.

Two increasingly popular alternatives to have opened in recent years are the Singapore International, where primary pupils spend two lessons a day studying Mandarin, and the Canadian International, which devotes five to six periods a week to Cantonese and also offers Chinese cultural studies.

The Kiangsu and Chekiang Primary School International Section (KCIS) at North Point is a lesser known option. It introduces children to Mandarin at kindergarten level. By Primary Four daily language lessons are supplemented by music and PE being taught in Mandarin.

Diana Green, dean of the school's English and international section, said that rather than professing to offer bilingual education, the aim of the school was to give pupils a thorough grounding in Chinese, written and spoken, as a second language. KCIS is attached to a Chinese school that has taught in Mandarin for the last 40 years.

Christopher Berisford, principal of the Chinese International, said: ''There appears to be a considerable need for bilingual education.'' But if it was to work, children had to be properly motivated and to enjoy the language that was new to them.

Advertisement