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Hong Kong: Language andEducation in a Post-colonialEraMee-Ling LaiPublished online: 23 Apr 2010.

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Hong Kong: Language and Education in aPost-colonial Era

Mee-ling LaiDepartment of English, Hong Kong Institute of Education, 10 Lo Ping Road,Tai Po, Hong Kong

IntroductionHong Kong was a British colony for more than a hundred years. In July 1997, it

was returned to the sovereignty of China (the People’s Republic of China – PRC).Before that, English (the coloniser’s language) and Cantonese (the vernacularlanguage) formed a diglossic situation when both languages were used in differ-ent domains and for different functions. English was a prestigious language forgovernment, law court, education and international business while Cantonesewas the language used in families and for daily-life purposes. English was alanguage for higher and wider communication, and Cantonese was a languagefor solidarity among the ethnic Chinese.

However, after the signing of the Sino-British joint declaration in 1984, HongKong started to prepare for a transition from diglossia to triglossia as it wascommonly believed that the importance of Putonghua (also known as Manda-rin), the national language of the PRC, was going to increase tremendously afterthe change of sovereignty (Lord, 1987; Kwo, 1994; Pierson, 1994). Such a predic-tion was confirmed after the handover when the Chief Executive of the firstHKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) Government spelt out the‘Biliterate and Trilingual’ language education aim in his first policy addressdelivered in October 1997. Following the political change, students of this gener-ation are expected to be proficient in written Modern Standard Chinese andEnglish and they should be able to speak fluent English, Cantonese as well asPutonghua.

Since the establishment of the new government, language in education poli-cies of Hong Kong have undergone great changes. As early as two months afterthe hand-over, top-down directives were sent to schools announcing the manda-tory implementation of mother tongue education in Hong Kong secondaryschools beginning in the academic year 1998–99. Before that, 90% of Hong Kongprimary schools were Chinese-medium (i.e. speak in Cantonese, write inModern Standard Chinese) while 90% of secondary schools were using Englishas the medium of instruction for all subjects except Chinese and Chinese history.Under the new policy, all secondary schools had to teach in Chinese by defaultunless they could prove that their staff and students were capable of teachingand learning through English. This policy not only converted 70% of the second-ary schools from EMI (English-medium instruction) into CMI (Chinese-mediuminstruction), but also marked an end to the 40-year-long English dominant era inthe history of Hong Kong secondary school education. To maintain the notion of

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‘one country, two systems’, Hong Kong schools would still use their vernacularlanguage, Cantonese, as the spoken instruction language. Putonghua, thenational language of the PRC, was added into the primary and secondary schoolcurriculum as a new core subject. According to Johnson (1998: 272):

a move towards Putonghua in Hong Kong is a sign of national integrationwhile making Cantonese the major medium of instruction in schools indi-cates a greater degree of autonomy and a separate identity with the PRC.

Hong Kong is basically a monolingual society where 95% of the populationare ethnic Chinese and Cantonese is the lingua franca. Theoretically, in a homog-enous society like Hong Kong, the problem of choosing the medium of instruc-tion in schools would be as easy as replacing the colonial language directly withthe vernacular that the indigenous majority will be able to understand withoutdifficulty. However, the Mother Tongue Education Policy was received withgreat resistance and resentment.

On the one hand, the new HKSAR Government is eager to play down theimportance of English in schools and promote Cantonese and Putonghua afterthe political change as a gesture of solidarity and decolonisation, yet on the otherhand, fear prevails within the public and also the government that a furtherdecline in the standard of English would diminish the competitiveness of the cityin the world’s arena. In fact, voices complaining about the poor standard ofEnglish have been heard for more than a decade (e.g. South China Morning Post,12/12/90, 15/3/98). Although there is no concrete evidence to prove that theEnglish standard of Hong Kong students has actually declined, what seems trueis that there is a widening gap between the level of English proficiencydemanded by society and the level which the education system can supply(Hong Kong Education Commission,1990; Johnson, 1994). There is an increasingdistrust of the stakeholders in the education system, and different commercialorganisations are now introducing their own exams to test the English standardof their potential employees. ELSA (English Language Skill Assessment) wasintroduced by the Hong Kong Federation of Industries, and the Hong KongGeneral Chamber of Commerce has proposed another exam to test the Englishstandard of the secondary school-leavers who are seeking employment in thebusiness sector (Hong Kong Standard, September 1999).

In order to compensate for the loss of exposure to English that mother-tongueeducation would inevitably bring about, a lot of public money was devoted toenhancing the students’ standard of English. The Language Development Fundwas set up and the Enhanced NET (Native-speaking English Teachers) Schemewas introduced. Under the new NET Scheme, the number of expatriate Englishlanguage teachers employed was increased dramaticallyfrom 58 in 1997to 700 in1998. Interestingly, however, there was in fact little positive evidence from thepreceding expatriate teachers’ schemes to support such a quick expansion of theNET Scheme.

Improving students’ language standard not only means allocating moreresources to schools, it also brings up the question of how effective the teachersare. Are they proficient enough to be language models for students? Are theycompetent enough to teach effectively? In Education Commission Report No. 6(1995), a benchmark exam was then proposed to test the standard of both

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Chinese and English language teachers. The first exam will be launched in 2001.Teacher trainees who fail in the exam will not be allowed to teach and any prac-tising teachers who fail in the exam will be given a maximum of 10 years toenhance their standard until they obtain a pass.

Tollefson (1995: 2) describes language policies as ‘an outcome of power strug-gles’; Cooke (1988) describes English as a Trojan Horse, a language of imperial-ism and of particular class interests. Pennycook (1995) points out that in manysocieties, especially in former colonies of Britain, English language education isused as a crucial distributor of social prestige and wealth. Even in the days ofneo-colonialism, English education is still used as a means of reproducing social,economic and political inequality, while being disguised as a neutral and usefullanguage for modernisation and outward communication. Although the HongKong SAR Government has greatly increased the status of Chinese in schools, yetEnglish remains a gatekeeper to higher education, better jobs and social posi-tions. Many parents still believe that English medium instruction will help theirchildren to acquire a better proficiency in English, which will open up a brighterfuture for them (Johnson, 1998). In a study reported by Walters and Balla (1998), asimilar attitude is found in the full-time students of a Hong Kong universitywhere a large percentage agrees that ‘studying in English will enhance theircareer prospects, while studying in Chinese would not’. Although a belief in thehigh instrumental value of English, according to Tollefson (1991) and Pennycook(1995), is only a myth created by the English-speaking powers to reproduceinequality in the world, yet to many ordinary Hong Kong students, it is a realitythey have to face if they want to enter the circle of the elite.

The ArticlesIt is against the above background that language education in Hong Kong

schools has entered a new post-colonial period. As in other parts of the world, thediscussion of language education policies in Hong Kong schools has gone farbeyond the education domain, and has become a political, cultural and socialissue. This special Hong Kong issue covers a wide range of topics, from macroissues like educational policies, curriculum changes, and the education of immi-grant children, to micro discussions about students’ learning motivation andteacher–pupil exchange in classrooms.

In the first article, Tsui et al. provide a comprehensive background to thelanguage situation in Hong Kong, accounting for the history of the MotherTongue Education Policy and its latest development. This paper reveals theunderlying political agendas behind the issue, and it suggests that whether toteach in English or Chinese in schools is not only a simple educational decision,but also a challenge for the new HKSAR Government to balance the need tostrengthen the national identity of Hong Kong people with the need to maintainthe international outlook and economic development of the city.

Building on the background of the Mother Tongue Education Policy, my arti-cle focuses on the enhanced NET (Native-speaking English Teachers) Scheme,which was introduced into Hong Kong schools to improve the students’ English.Through a comparison with the JET (Japanese Exchange and Teaching)Programme (a similar expatriate teachers’ scheme in Japan) implemented in

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Japan, the paper explores further the sociopolitical and cultural implications ofimporting English teachers into Hong Kong.

With the change of sovereignty, Hong Kong faces not only political changes,but also social changes. As a result of the increased number of cross-bordermarriages in the last two decades, a large number of children born in MainlandChina have gained the right of abode in Hong Kong. Immigrant children whoenter the Hong Kong education system are highly disadvantaged mainlybecause of language barriers. Many of them can neither speak Cantonese, thevernacular language of Hong Kong, nor can they cope with the demandingEnglish curriculum in secondary schools. This creates serious pressures both onthe immigrant students and the schools, especially when no special expertise orresources are provided to help both the students and teachers. Ng and Liu inter-viewed ten secondary school teachers and their paper discusses the difficultiescaused by the recent influx of children from China into Hong Kong.

From political and social changes, the issue now turns to the culture of HongKong education. The paper by Carless explores the impact of Chinese culture onthe school curriculum while Lee has a special interest in studying the factors thatcontribute to the apparent reluctance of Chinese students to participate activelyin tutorial discussions. Carless argues that the Target-Oriented Curriculum(TOC) transplanted from western-based concepts is not commensurate with thelocalChinese cultural context, and therefore leads to many problems when beingimplemented in schools. Similarly, Lee points out that the passive style of partici-pation of Hong Kong students in tutorial discussions is a result of the traditionalChinese concepts of teachers’ and students’ roles in the classroom. Lee foundfrom her research that if students are prepared in certain way, they can discuss atopic confidently with people they are familiar with.

Given the strong views of the public on maintaining Hong Kong’s status as aninternational city, Green and Lai look at the quality of L2 learning motivation ofHong Kong students. While Green is interested in measuring Hong Kongstudents’ motivation against Deci and Ryan’s (1985) regulatory continuum, Laidid straightforward surveys among secondary and university students in orderto find out why they learn English. Although Green and Lai differ in theirresearch designs, yet both found similar results, namely that Hong Kongstudents are mostly motivated by external factors. Lai, however, warns in herpaper that motivation to learn English would further decline after the change ofsovereignty when more jobs would be available with Mainland China linksrather than with international links.

Finally, Lin’s paper takes us into an ordinary secondary school classroom inHong Kong, where the English lesson is in progress. In the dialogues, we see themixed-code English-Chinese exchange between teacher and pupils that is typicalof Hong Kong classrooms. The paper points out that teaching in Hong Kong isoften too exam-oriented, and shows how a reading activity is reduced in theclassroom merely to a comprehension task. Students are trained to give correctanswers to the prescribed questions, but discouraged from negotiating their ownsense of the text. Nonetheless the students succeed in subverting the intent of thecurriculum, and are still able to exploit the text as a source of enjoyment.

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AcknowledgementI would like to thank my co-editor, Dr Eoghan Mac Aogáin, for suggesting the

special issue on Hong Kong to me, and sharing with me the task of selecting andpreparing the articles for publication. It has been a wonderful experience work-ing with and learning from him.

About the Guest EditorMee-ling Lai is a lecturer in English at Hong Kong Institute of Education. She

trains English teachers for primary and secondary levels in Hong Kong. Herresearch focuses on English language teaching, second language learning moti-vation, and language in education policies.

CorrespondenceAny correspondence should be directed to Mee-ling Lai, Department of

English, Hong Kong Institute of Education, 10 Lo Ping Road, Tai Po, Hong Kong(mllai@ied.edu.hk).

ReferencesCooke, D. (1988) Ties that constrict: English as a Trojan horse. In A. Cumming, A. Gagné,

and J. Dawson (eds) Awareness: Proceedings of the 1987 TESL Ontario Conference (pp.56–62). Toronto: TESL Ontario.

Hong Kong Education Commission (1990) Hong Kong Education Commission Report No. 4.Hong Kong Government Printer.

Hong Kong Education Commission (1995) Hong Kong Education Commission Report No. 6.Hong Kong Government Printer.

Hong Kong Standard (4/9/1999) New scheme geared for schools – Big business plans toraise English skills.

Johnson, K. (1994)Language policy and planning in Hong Kong. Annual Review of AppliedLinguistics 14, 177–99.

Johnson, K. (1998) Language and education in Hong Kong. In M.C. Pennington (ed.)Language in Hong Kong at Century’s End. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Kwo, O.W.Y. (1994) The teaching of Putonghua in Hong Kong schools: Languageeducation in a changing economic and political context. In G.A. Postiglione (ed.)Education and Society in Hong Kong – Toward One Country and Two Systems (pp. 184–203).Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.

Lord, R. (1987) Language policy and planning in Hong Kong: Past, present and(especially) future. In R. Lord and H.N.L. Cheng (eds) Language Education in Hong Kong(pp. 3–26). Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.

Pennycook, A. (1995) English in the world/The world in English. In J.W. Tollefson (ed.)Power and Inequality in Language Education. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Pierson, H. (1994) Cantonese, English, or Putonghua – Unresolved communicative issuein Hong Kong’s future. In G.A. Postiglione (ed.) Education and Society in Hong Kong –Toward One Country and Two Systems (pp. 168–83). Hong Kong: Chinese UniversityPress.

South China Morning Post (12/12/90) Poor English ‘a threat to role of Hong Kong’.South China Morning Post (15/3/98) Hong Kong’s English standards decline.Tollefson, J.W. (1991) Planning Language, Planning Inequality: Language Policy in the

Community. London: Longman.Tollefson, J.W. (1995) Power and Inequality in Language Education. New York: Cambridge

University Press.Walters, S. and Balla, J. (1998) English medium of instruction at City Polytechnic of Hong

Kong Research Report 17. In M.C. Pennington (ed.) Language in Hong Kong at Century’sEnd (pp. 365–90). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

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