Do Hong Kong Students Have Good English?

Most of the people here probably know that HK was colonized by British in the past. Not surprisingly Hong Kong People should speak a good English. It is not true actually. On the contrary the English level among HK new generation are descending. The reasons are shown below.

1.       Implementation of local language teaching

As a part of China, it is inevitable that the HK students learn Cantonese, a common language among HK. Although some of the elective subjects are taught in English during their senior secondary school, Cantonese is still dominant in the class with the aid of English-written book. Teachers believe teaching in Cantonese is better for the understanding. Therefore, students use Cantonese most of the time. The only time to use English is on the English lesson. Compared to Singapore, the whole city are seemed to use English daily. The English level of HK is reasonably poorer than countries like Singapore that using English everywhere.

2.       Grouping by language

Universities in Hong Kong have very good ranking among the world. They are also acclaimed for their internationality. It is true that you can see various foreigner around the campus. So you may image that the local and foreigner would well mix together. They talk happily and share ideas enthusiastically. However, what I see most is we all group together by our language. English-Spoken person have their own circle that the local people seldom interfere. The time we share our idea the most is the group project section. Professor may mandatorily assign as most different background as possible into a group. At other time, Korean has their group, European has their group, local has our group.

3.       HK people are shy to speak English

No matter how we encourage people to speak more English, we also feel nervous when talk with foreigner. Maybe it stems from lack of confidence about English. 

4.       English is one of the most difficult subject

English is one of the subject that the candidates perform the poorest in the public exam. The passing rate is only 50% with the passing score is just around 30% of total score, approximately equivalent to IELTS 5. Due to the Cantonese-dominant environment, students hardly can improve English from surrounding.  School and tutorial classes are the only place to lean English. However, these place are focusing more on the exam skill rather than the "true English". What the tutorial classes teach is how to get mark without knowing the meaning of the article, or how to write a high score essay by reciting beautiful sentence. 

Actually English in HK is mainly important for the high-level job, lets say the salary is more than HKD 30000. For the people working in a ordinary hierarchy, English is not very common. If a language cannot be applied in daily, it will come to a certain limit ultimately.

If you hold another opinion, just leave your comment below.