English Language Case Study

Recommendations There has been no easy solution to the problems highlighted thus far. Wong [ibid] suggests partial immersion as the best solution to the problem. As he states: The root of the problem of the secondary school place allocation is that the two languages are being used as a selective or streaming criterion, and consequently secondary schools and students are classified into CMI (Chinese medium instruction) streams or EMI (English-medium instruction) streams. If CMI schools were given the flexibility to introduce English-medium teaching gradually and progressively (e. g. in one subject in secondary 1 and two subjects in secondary 2 and so on), the highly undesirable distinction and discrimination of the dual-medium system

One of these has been conducted by two researchers, Gow and Chow (n. d.). In their study these researchers wanted to detect the relationship between approaches to learning and English language ability of students in a tertiary institution in Hong Kong. The students under investigation in this project attended a tertiary institution in Hong Kong where both Cantonese and English were used in instruction (Immersion Education). The proportion of the teaching in English and Cantonese varied from subject to subject and teacher to teacher, with a range from limited to almost complete use of Cantonese. It is important to note that code-switching between Cantonese and English by Chinese teachers is common, with increasing use of Cantonese in less formal situations, like tutorials and discussions after class. The situation is similar to the kind of code-switching that has been observed of teachers’ instruction in secondary schools in Hong Kong. Examinations were in English, as are most of the written materials, like textbooks and

The effects of instruction in English on the learning of students in Hong Kong has attracted much concern, largely because many of the students are not proficient in English (Cooper, 1980; Ho, 1979; Llewellyn, 1982; cited in Gow and Chow, n. d.). The results of the study, however, indicated that the subjects with lower ability in English language were found to be more likely to adopt a surface strategy in their learning. On the other hand, deep motivation was positively related to English language ability. Qualitative data were also collected from interviews in an effort to explain the mechanisms behind these observations. "It was suggested that students who are weaker in English concentrate initially on deciphering the rhetorical aspects of text so are less likely to visualise the underlying meaning of what they are reading" (Gow and Chow). In another research carried out by Fan (2003) which, according to the scholar, is the largest scale project conducted in Hong Kong concerning learning through medium of instruction, included 1067 students studying at higher education. The results of the study obtained from a reliable questionnaire shed light on the matter that students were more in favor of learning their courses through English as the medium of