Language Culture and Curriculum
Editor and Book Reviews Editor: Eoghan Mac Aogain (St Patrick's College)
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Volume: 12 Number: 3 Page: 229–237
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Teaching English to Chinese Immigrants in Hong Kong Secondary Schools
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Christina Ng and Cora Liu
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Despite the fact that Hong Kong is now a part of China, there are differences between Hong Kong and the main land, especially in terms of the education system, school environment, and learning culture,and
learner proficiency level of English. Based on interviews with ten secondary school teachers, the paper discusses the difficulties caused by the recent influx of children from China into Hong Kong. Firstly,
there are difficulties for the immigrants themselves. They have to search for a school that will accept the children, and the children are often rejected because their English is not good enough. Secondly,
there are difficulties for the classroom teacher. Added to the problems of teaching through English,there are now additional problems with the Chinese children, such as different first languages and no
single lingua franca. And there are difficulties for the schools, for example, caused by the lack of systematic admission procedures, and insufficient support for schools and teachers in this respect.The
paper makes a number of observations and recommendations that may help to alleviate the situation.
© Multilingual Matters 1999
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