Want Hong Kong children to speak better English? Get them to listen for it
While exposure to listening materials is essential for schoolchildren to spontaneously recognise and accurately pronounce English words, parents in Hong Kong have limited access to learning materials for English listening. The major publishers of English textbooks usually do not provide the supplementary audio materials to parents. Schools also offer limited guidance and support on this. Most homework assignments focus on reading and writing, even though the Education Bureau calls for meaningful homework in more diverse forms in the Basic Education Curriculum Guide.
How English can save Hong Kong from becoming ‘just another Chinese city’
However, there is a range of resources available for parents to cultivate their children’s English-listening skills. The Open University has developed a set of free Open Textbooks, including audio files, for primary schoolchildren.
Open University of Hong Kong makes online teaching materials freely available
Unfortunately, only a small number of local schools have adopted the Open Textbooks, and many parents remain unaware of them. Likewise, more outreach efforts are required to inform parents of the listening materials available from the public libraries, the Education Bureau and HKEdCity.
Such efforts could be supported by funding channels such as Quality Education Fund. In the past 20 years, the fund has supported 407 project proposals that contain the title keyword “reading” but only 14 proposals focusing on “listening”. The Education Bureau should devote more resources to promoting English listening materials among parents through the fund.
Simon Wang, Kowloon Tong
