Hearing voices (in English)

Two weeks ago, at a seminar on teaching English hosted by the South China Morning Post and attended by more than 400 teachers, two sets of seemingly contradictory figures were presented by two speakers.

The head of the English Language Teaching Unit of Chinese University, Arthur McNeill, reported that many students coming into the university had limited English vocabularies - 'woefully' inadequate for academic study - according to a recent survey. He believed that students at other institutions were just as bad.

A more upbeat presentation came from Chris Wardlaw, deputy secretary for Education and Manpower. Between 2001 and last year, he said, the percentage of students scoring grade C or above in English in the Certificate of Education Examination rose to 11.4 per cent from 10.2 per cent, while those achieving C or above in the A-Level examination also rose marginally, from 15.2 per cent to 15.5 per cent.

He said slight improvements in English skills were recorded among primary graduates, as the average scores in the Pre-Secondary One test increased from the low to the mid-fifties.

Mr Wardlaw was not trying to brag about the achievements of government measures to improve English language teaching, as the increases were small. But he wanted to show that things were at least not getting worse. While the two speakers may have seemed to contradict one another, in fact they did not. They were taking snapshots from different vantage points and of different subjects.

It is safe to say that while the proportion of school-leavers who have a reasonable command of English has not fallen, the majority who enter our universities still have a lot of catching up to do.

Overall, the demand for competent users of English is still outstripping supply, and our school system has not been able to boost that supply adequately.

Despite persistent complaints about falling English standards, two academics have argued, on another occasion, that this impression does not square with the facts. Kingsley Bolton, visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong's Department of Linguistics, and John Bacon-Shone, director of its Social Science Research Centre, have been tracking Hong Kong's language scene by conducting periodic surveys.

They told a seminar at the University of Hong Kong last month that the number of people claiming to know some English was higher than ever. In 1983, 33 per cent said they did not know the language at all, but that figure dropped to 17 per cent in 1993 and 11 per cent in 2003.

Their conclusion: more and more people are speaking English well, but perhaps more are also speaking it badly. Unfortunately, their study cannot tell us the level of English proficiency of the respondents.

My guess is the number of English speakers has grown enormously over the past 20 years, largely because of the introduction of nine years of universal education from 1978. But because of an early emphasis on quantity rather than quality, the majority of students who came through the school system have ended up with only a smattering of English.

Over the years, educators have never stopped debating the best means of teaching English. And there is still no consensus on whether and when students should be streamed according to their proficiency levels - as if only a finite number of students could ever become good English speakers.

Perhaps they should also take note of the fact that, as more and more people know the language, a highly selective teaching strategy may not be appropriate.

C.K. Lau is the Post's executive editor, policy