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February 18, 2009

End the pretense and let schools have real English

Kent Ewing:

The taxi driver spoke mangled English; I responded in mangled Cantonese. In the end, I got where I wanted to go, and he received his fare.

For both parties, then, the journey was a success. Moreover, in an elementary sort of way, it was an educational, even a cultural, experience.

But is this the future of English- language education in Hong Kong?

Happy as I was to arrive at my destination that day, I hope we can do better in Hong Kong's schools.

Indeed, in a classroom environment, I would rather lose my linguistic way entirely than find it through the development of a mixed-code patois that, in the end, will get me no farther in the real world than the confines of a Hong Kong taxi or wet market.

There is no question that Hong Kong beyond its small, elite class of political, business and educational leaders is a city that communicates with outsiders in a mixed code that ultimately amounts to really bad English with Cantonese thrown in when that bad English inevitably ends in total collapse.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at February 18, 2009 3:11 AM
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