According to a survey by the As-sociation of International Ac-countants Hong Kong Branch, 23 percent of Hong Kong university students cannot speak Mandarin, and 54 percent of firms think that Hong Kong students’ English is just average.

Jane Wong, 37, is a mother of two. She teaches English in a secondary school and realizes the shortcomings of language education in Hong Kong.

Said she, “I know that my students hardly speak English or Mandarin after class.

“I send my children to an international school. They are forced to speak English there, both in and out of class.

“A Mandarin tutor comes to my home once a week. She teaches my children spoken and written Mandarin on a one-to-one basis.”

The tutor, Katie Zhao, feels under pressure because the kids are not very cooperative.

“The two children are so young, and they don’t understand the importance of learning Mandarin.

“It seems that Mandarin is useless in local children’s daily lives, so it is really hard to make them interested in learning it.

“To learn a language, younger means better. But by the time people realize this, they are adults already,” said she.

Richard Tsang, managing director of Strategic Financial Relations Limited, said, “Jobs in my firm require fluency in both Chinese and English.

“In the past 2 years, we’ve had more clients from the Mainland than before. Mandarin is becoming more important in business.

“But only a few university graduates can meet our requirements.
“Many graduates’ writing abilities in both English and Chinese are weak,” said he. “They can’t speak Mandarin well.” “More than 10 years ago, only about 1.8 percent of high school graduates were accepted as university students in Hong Kong. These students were proficient in the languages.

“But now, the places for university students have greatly increased.
About 20 percent of high school graduates go to local universities every year.

“Thus, the average language ability of university students has declined.

“Anyway, I believe that the language ability of the top 1.8 percent students is still quite good,” he said.

He suggested that students practise often in order to improve their language ability.

“I recommend that young people read classical Chinese literature and best-selling Western novels. They shouldn’t choose popular magazines for language study.

“There is no shortcut for language learning. The only way to grasp it is to use it.”

In January 2004, the mainland government and the Hong Kong SAR government started the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement. Firms in the Mainland began to recruit Hong Kong university graduates. Lu Guo Ping, director of Shanghai-Hong Kong Talent Exchange Hotline, says employment opportunities in China are a good reason for local students to learn Mandarin.

“We think that university students in Hong Kong are not superior in language. We are able to find enough graduates with good language ability on the Mainland.

“Hong Kong students have their advantages in other areas. But to get good jobs in Shanghai, poor Mandarin is sometimes a barrier.

“Facing this problem, we are considering offering some courses to help them with their Mandarin or even Shanghai dialect.”

Prof. Ho Man Wui, the registrar of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, said, “We have courses that teach students skills in using dictionaries, phonetic symbols and pinyin.

“With such courses, they may make progress through self-study.”

Prof. Ho said that grammar and pronunciation are the two major weaknesses of Hong Kong students.

Said he: “Most schools hardly teach grammar, because they care only about spoken Chinese.

“High schools do not teach phonetic symbols, so students don’t know how to pronounce words properly.”

He said that the Education and Manpower Bureau should work out a systematized plan for local students’ language study.

“However, only students themselves can enhance their language ability,” said Prof. Ho.

Singapore’s Singlish
a cause for worry

By Karen Tong

‘Our English is not perfect. We mix English with local dialects and our grammar is not good, either. Grammar is too boring to learn,” says Marcus Chew, a Singaporean student at Nanyang Technological University.

Hong Kong people speak “Chinglish”, and Singaporeans speak “Singlish”.

Singlish is English mixed with words mainly from Hokkien and Malay.

For example, Singaporeans mix words such as pai seh, a Hokkien word meaning “embarrassed”, and makan, a Malay word meaning “eat”, with standard English in their everyday conversations.

Apart from English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, which make up the four official languages, there are other dialects spoken in Singapore.

When native English speakers come to Singapore, although what they hear is mostly English, it is easy to get lost in sentences like “That suit he is wearing is so cheena,” in which cheena means old-fashioned.

The use of Singlish has sparked public debate in Singapore. While some people give it credit for contributing to a Singaporean culture, others worry that the country’s English standard will decline.

Teh Jane Khim, a Singaporean English teacher at the East Spring Secondary School, said, “Students often don’t realize Singlish is grammatically wrong.”

She added that using this “broken English” hinders English teaching and learning.

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