Medium Of Instruction In Hong Kong Essay

Medium of Instruction in Hong Kong

By 1997, most of the secondary schools (around 60-90%) in Hong Kong use English to teach, however, since 1998, the Hong Kong government introduced a policy called ‘mother-tongue teaching’ which forces government and government-aided secondary schools to change their Medium of Instruction (MOI) from English to Chinese (mainly Cantonese). Only around 100 schools are allowed to keep on using English because of their previous high achievement. They use English to teach in all subjects except Chinese language, Chinese history and Chinese literature. While the others have to use our mother tongue in teaching except for English language class . This policy sparks a controversial discussion in society, querying the effect of ‘mother-tongue teaching’, whether it is really good for our generations.

Due to the special historical background of Hong Kong, English is also one of our official languages. Since Hong Kong is an international business, financial and trading centre, maintaining a good standard of English is crucial to our economic competitiveness. English seems to have a superior position in Hong Kong. Thus, parents are more likely to send their children to English as Medium of Instruction (EMI) schools in order to receive better education and expose to English medium more. Only 114 EMI schools (25% of all Hong Kong schools) left after introducing ‘mother-tongue teaching’ policy in 1998. It brings out the problem of the probability of entering EMI schools dramatically decreases (from 60-90% before 1997 to 25% after 1997). Because of this, competition among primary students is intense. Children are forced to be all-rounded, by learning foreign languages, different sports and musical instruments, even drawing before they enter primary school for having a better competitiveness for gaining a place in an EMI school. It also leads to a big differentiation between EMI schools and Chinese as Medium of Instruction (CMI) schools. Since...