Lower language standards won’t do Hong Kong students any favours in the real world
In the short term, this might sound like good news to graduates, parents and secondary schools. Yet, any relaxation of the language requirements could be detrimental to students and the job market in the long run.
Undergraduates with substandard language abilities might struggle to meet the language demands of coping with their academic requirements, regardless of their majors. Across disciplines at university level, students are required to read and write academic prose for assessment purposes. While language courses are in place to help the linguistically less inclined to catch up, some students would pretty much find themselves in a “sink or swim” scenario, putting in extra time, energy and effort into brushing up their language.
There is little doubt that their substandard language proficiency would inhibit their academic performance and render their tertiary education ineffective.
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As for Chinese, universities might determine the possibility of accepting GCSE Chinese scores as an alternative way to fulfil the Chinese requirement. Of course, such drastic changes to the university admission exercise would require the consensus of different stakeholders to come up with the best possible policy that could be beneficial to universities, students, employers and society as a whole.
Jason Tang, Tin Shui Wai