China: Secondary schools will be allowed to choose the medium of instruction for various subjects from September next year, according to a HK$1 billion plan unveiled by the government yesterday. However, schools choosing to use English must ensure that 85 percent of students in a class are among the top 40 percent of students in [...]
China: Up to 80 Hong Kong schools could be given the choice of switching back to teaching in English, eleven years after a “mother-tongue” policy ordered them to teach in Chinese, government officials confirmed Friday. The Earth Times notes that the proposal, submitted to lawmakers on Thursday, is aimed at improving English-language standards which have [...]
Drama, with its extensive range of meaningful contexts, can help develop students’ language skills, including writing, chairman of the Standing Committee on Language Education & Research Michael Tien said today.
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Hong Kong: A while ago I noted that only one in seven Hong Kong people consider themselves as speakers of ‘good’ English. However, eleven years after it ceased to be a British colony, English remains the most important language to master in Hong Kong’s business and professional world, according to a recent survey. Written English [...]
Eleven years after British rule ended, only one in seven Hong Kong people consider themselves as speakers of ‘good’ English, according to a survey released October 10. More than 40 per cent of people in the former British colony describe their level of English as below average or worse while 15 percent describe it as [...]
Hong Kong’s students must master English to ensure the country’s global competitiveness. This was the message today from Secretary for Education Michael Suen, speaking at the Heung Hoi Ching Kok Lin Association’s Secondary & Primary Schools & Kindergartens.
He shared with students views raised among member economies at the fourth APEC Education Ministerial Meeting he attended [...]
It was an admission of cultural defeat; but then Hong Kong is nothing if not pragmatic about such things. On June 6th its education minister, Michael Suen Ming-yeung, lifted restrictions that forced four-fifths of the territory’s more than 500 secondary schools to teach in the “mother tongue”, ie, Cantonese, the main language of its residents [...]
