Sun News: 港人英語能力急跌

[ref=219415]chrisappear[/ref]  在 2005-5-6 03:01 PM 發表:


If you have lyrics, it will be much better to examine on yourself.

yup, I always do in this way
sotimes you may not to memorize all the lyrics in your mind
but when you hearing the song, you still can know which word
is in the lyrics

Actually, Hongkongese are used to speak Cantonese
and it is uneasy to switch them on to speak English

I believe that Hongkongese are good enough
to write those English letters and memos and read them out
rather than speaking what they are wanted to speak

Thanks to the education system promoting writing and reading English,
Hongkongese are not good enough and BOLD enough to speak out:
Could all of our Hongkongese educated in Hongkong's schools
can freely shout out what they are want to say during the English lessons?
I believe that our Students were being suppressed to speak out
because of the culture of Hongkong schools...(Quite, Quite, Quite)
and nobody (except myself, I need to declear) wanted to become the 'rule breakers'

If my words, being silent during English learning is very stupid thing
to master the speaking and listening skills
Could any babies write mother/father
before their mouth shout ma/pa before entering Kindergarden??

Therefore, English lessons in Hongkong made Hongkongese
unwilling to speak English as fluent as Cantonese.
(Shall Dr. Li, our education boss in Hongkong, do anything
to wiped out those exam effects and those bureaucratic syllibus
EVEN those parents still believing the myth of correct spelling
and dictations that never welcomed??)

PS If you can't tell the masses what you are wanted to tell,
you are unable and must not write that things out from your hands.
Languages always comes the voices before the words:
like Takalog in the Phillipines and the Indonesian official language:
Without an Alphabet, they can speak that out well...
Why Hongkongese still believing something opposite than
those realities happened somewhere else?

Please accept my apology if my words hurts you, if any.

[ref=219727]LNChickenRice[/ref]  在 2005-5-6 12:21 發表:

Actually, Hongkongese are used to speak Cantonese
and it is uneasy to switch them on to speak English

I believe that Hongkongese are good enough
to write those English letters and memos and re ...

Put it this way. HKers don't fancy speaking english simply because of a lack
of confidence.

This is down to many reasons. One, as you said, is the current education
system in Hong Kong empathsise on grammar very heavily. I don't think
that schools do not provide much opportunities to use the language, esp.
on speaking.

The other reason is preception. Many HKers think that Britons and Americans
(et al) speaks english very well, and so well that it sounds like a song. When
they compare that to what he/she speaks themselves, they just thought "Oh
no my english is crap".

I personally think that in general, the standard of english in Hong Kong is
not too bad. In terms of grammar, I think we can even edge quite a lot of
Britons too. Speaking-wise, I think we have to accept that in many cases,
we never speak the same tone as people who speaks the language since
they are born. We just have a different accent.

Very true.Actually Hong Kong student's English grammar is much better than Americans.
When I was still studying classes for English grammar in America,
I was so surprised that most of the students were American----and they even needed to ask me questions about grammar.
Their grammar skill was not as good as what I had thought before.

The weaknesses of Hong Kong students are listening,speaking and vocabulary.
I have to say the most difficult one is listening.I have lived in America for three years,
but somtimes I still have troubles talking on the phone with English,
but watching TV or talking to others is ok.Listening to songs sometimes helps----but only the slow ones.
Fast songs usually contain lots of slang,
like gotta(got to),gonna(going to),wanna(want to),etc etc...
It may not be easy to catch the meaning if you don't have the experience about those slangs.

There is no way to imporve your speaking skill except practicing continously.
I am living in a host,and there is no way that I can speak Cantonese to anybody.
I have been continuously speaking English all the time for three years and it's much better now.
(At least it's ok to deal with most of the stuff daily)

You can learn a lot of vocabulary by watching movie---without Chinese caption(subtitle).
It will be hard at the beginning,but you will find it very useful later on.
Of course,the movie is going to be more interesting.

[ Last edited by joeli16 on 2005-5-8 at 07:32 ]

I think I cannot agree that the emphasis on grammar is a problem...
I would agree that it would create an atmosphere that would pressurize students to think very carefully before they really speak,
but then the problem is that they are not bold enough and think that they are most probably wrong,
and therefore think that they'd better shut up.

Being a personal tutor myself,
I can see quite a handful of my students actually have very poor grammar,
and not to mention that they cannot speak very well.
I think the problem is with the mentality that they have,
rather than English being a difficult subject in itself.

Seconded those pals speak behind my previous post.
I believe that HK students face very weird
to use English as a living language, but the language that
(May I have your pardon, dear friends,)
the Language that slaved their school lifes.

Grammar-orientated English education may seems working
with those people whom already DARE to speak it,
rather than the people totally don't know English.

For an Economy sayings, HK Students attitude of English Lesson
is quite passive: useless grammar exercises repeated,
dictations that bring feeling of failure and SHAME to use English
as everyday matters.
If I were those students, I might be fallen asleep
during the English Lesson (It's really boring me)
and got myself not involved in those English Lesson:
Why need I do trying my best to win those SHAME from
0-mark dictations and tests seems to be never ended?

To motivate these type of Hong Kong students
please do them a flavor: don't let them down and down,
and withdrawn from English, an interesting language by themselves?
In my words, failures were not the effective way
to make people learning from their failures, but most of them:
simply QUIT it and got their attitude PASSIVE.

What I am saying is that
HK students were already suffered from FAILURE and related FEAR of it
and I believe that HK students are not 'rubbish' (from those bossy language)
since they are not being welcomed by the English world
as making them '2nd-class migrants' during the education process
(Compared with Japanese and Korean:
HK people learn them for their interest (hobbies, fashion, etc.)
even they required to master the complex language grammar etc.

I wonder: why not ENGLISH?
(and my answer: people feel too shamed to use it
even it does not a Shamful matter at all!)

[ref=221675]307[/ref]  在 2005-5-8 10:58 AM 發表:

I think I cannot agree that the emphasis on grammar is a problem...
I would agree that it would create an atmosphere that would pressurize students to think very carefully before they really speak,
but then the problem is that they are not bold enough and think that they are most probably wrong,
and therefore think that they'd better shut up.

Being a personal tutor myself,
I can see quite a handful of my students actually have very poor grammar,
and not to mention that they cannot speak very well.
I think the problem is with the mentality that they have,
rather than English being a difficult subject in itself.

I agree with you that they always think that, if they speak in English
near 90% they will say wrong and people will laugh at them or can
not get their meaning (so do I)

However, I cannot agree with that, HK students have a poor grammar base
It depends on the student, frankly speaking, if a child studied in a band 3 school
we cannot expect he or she have a good fundation of grammar. But there should
be some exceptions and vice versa in Band 1 school

Try to think in this way, though Chinese and Cantonese is our mother tongue
but do we can manage them well? I think same situation also occur in English
as mother tongue countries

[ref=221675]307[/ref]  在 2005-5-8 02:58 發表:

I think I cannot agree that the emphasis on grammar is a problem...
I would agree that it would create an atmosphere that would pressurize students to think very carefully before the ...

To a certain extent, it is what drives the problem. Emphasis of grammar
is nothing wrong in terms of writing, but when you speak, sometimes you
cannot spend too much time worrying whether you are using the grammar
correctly. When you do that, chances are 1. you lose your head on what
you really want to say; 2. you lose confidence because you think you are
stuck on grammar. What happen next then. You decide not to speak at
all. And I think that is what happened to many of the HKers.

I agree that there are folks arpund whose grammar are crap, but on the
other hand, in general I don't think the standard of english in Hong Kong
is not as bad as most have thought. However, the Achilles heel is HKers'
reluctance to speak the language when they have the opportunity to do so,
and the lack of such opportunities, esp. in school, is not helping the matter
either.

[ref=219106]hkbw[/ref]  在 2005-5-6 05:01 AM 發表:

http://the-sun.com.hk/channels/n ... 506020202_0001.html
Well, as a HK citizen, I think HK people really need to worry about their level and
standard of English. Even now ...

The accent of British vary greatly in different regions,
I think the accent of other foreigh students
other then British is much more easier to understand
then those of local students.

Maybe 307 misunderstood what I meant...
Actually I want to say is that Hong Kong students
have great grammar base comparing
to Americans who are using English all the time.
They should not feel shame about themselves.
Like what NV58 have said,
those are the difficulties for speaking in English.
But if they have the confidence to speak up,
and don't worry about the grammar,
they will have great success in communicating with others.
I am sure people who get used to that will know
and will be patient to listen what you are trying to say.
I don't know about British,but Americans themselves don't care
about grammar so much in real life,
and you can catch what they say easily
as they speak pretty slow.