Letters | Broken English shows Hong Kong schools need to fix the system
Having grown up in Hong Kong, learned English as a second language and then studied English language and literature alongside native speakers at a university in an English-speaking country, I learned the hard way that there was a discernible gap between my native-speaking classmates and me.
Not only did I find myself not knowing certain basics of the English language, I had poorer comprehension and writing skills compared with my native-speaking classmates. Fortunately, I had a reasonable foundation that allowed me to catch up and narrow that gap.
After all the hype about reforms to education and language teaching since 1997, one would expect things to have changed for the better. Yet, decades later, when I picked up my son’s junior secondary school textbooks for geography and history, I was very disturbed by how poorly these books were written in English.
I agree with the writer that students “should be exposed to natural language use through the introduction of authentic English”, and this should apply to all aspects of school where students are exposed to English. How can we expect our students to have a good command of English when the textbooks they use are written in pidgin English?
The fact is that children in Hong Kong start learning English from as young as three years old. Nevertheless, even though many studies suggest children who start learning a foreign language at or before the age of six or seven should be able to reach native fluency, many secondary school students in Hong Kong, despite learning English for 10-plus years, struggle to express themselves in the language. Clearly, something is fundamentally wrong with our system. Defending it doesn’t help at all.
Andrew Lee, Tung Chung
