Course TESOL Rates

Problem for learners in Hong KongHong Kong had been the colony of england for one and a half century until she was returned to China on 1/7/1997. Mandarin won over english and has become a massively growing language in Hong Kong since then. Although nowadays there are still loads of Hongkongers who prefer to have english as their second language, the chances for them to be exposed to it are getting less and less as there are lots of problems for english learners in Hong Kong such as education system, teaching methodology and westernized- chinese lifestyle. Our education system of language acquisition has changed dramatically after 1997. english schools, where their english teachers were mainly British, were always the first priority to students. Nowadays, a great number of such schools are reduced due to the establishment of chinese schools which emphasize the importance of Mandarin. Many students are “forced” to go to chinese schools because of the lack of vacancies in english schools. They get less exposure of english for some critical years of learning a language. Moreover, studying in Hong Kong is free- only for nine years. Learners have to pay a fortune to continue their secondary or tertiary study in their main field, not to mention english. Learners from rich families can attend private schools or english institutions to achieve a higher level of english. The others can get a very limited amount of subsidy from the government and take some courses, which are taught by non-native english speakers so obviously they are not with the highest quality. Teaching methodology is also a major problem for learners. We have a say in Hong Kong about teaching: “to feed the ducks”. There are two reasons for that: first, a lot of old teachers who obtained their teaching skills from nowhere in the past, they have been teaching for decades and still believe in the old learning style- students should remember all knowledge as they are told. This indicates being able to retain correct answers is far more important than how they are formed. Therefore, teachers keep feeding the “ducks”, which refers to “learners” by giving them all information instead of explanations. For example, “apple” is read as “apple” and there is no “why”. When the learners just memorise the pronunciation of “apple”, they may not be able to read “maple” as no one ever told then how to break down the syllables. Although the newly trained teachers have more efficient ways to teach english now, sometimes they fall back to the “duck-feeding” stage as these teachers are trained by the “old duck- feeders” or even get affected because they work in the same school. Therefore english learners can’t produce much output of english- they never successfully process the input by only memorising. Cantonese is our mother tongue. However, in trains, restaurants, cinemas, shops, to name a few, everything is in english as well. Thanks to the multiculturalism in Hong Kong as a touristic city, we actually have a lot of chances to access to english every day. Then here is the problem- “Chinglish”, a mixture of Cantonese and english, which has been seen as a “speciality” in Hong Kong for the local to be proud of. Quite a few Hongkongers, especially the youths, love so much this trendy language. We say “book a table” in Cantonese with keeping the english word “book” without /k/ sound plus the chinese words for “table”; we never say “business trip” in Cantonese but in english; people don’t understand of laugh at you if you say “war game” in Cantonese. When learners really need to produce english, they get confused with the english and “Chinglish”. “Can I book a ticket?” becomes “can I boo a ticket?”