Trilingual Education in Hong Kong Primary Schools by Lixun Wang & Andy Kirkpatrick

Author:Lixun Wang & Andy Kirkpatrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030110819
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

5.10 Conclusion

It is clear from the survey that, without government guidelines, individual primary schools have adopted their own policies regarding the use of medium of instruction in teaching different subjects, even across the same type of schools, i.e., government schools, aided schools and Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) schools. The findings of this study have provided a rough picture of the current situation of trilingual education implementation in Hong Kong primary schools. Some patterns have been identified: the majority of the schools use Cantonese as the major MoI in most subjects except the English Language subject and Putonghua subject, but the DSS schools are predominately EMI schools. Many schools do not encourage code-switching in the classroom, but some allow a certain amount of code-switching, but mainly in junior grades. The language subjects dominate school curricula. The DSS schools seem to be more confident than the aided schools and government schools regarding their graduates’ proficiency level in the three languages, and the aided schools and government schools have rather low confidence in their graduates’ English language proficiency (both spoken and written). Regarding Putonghua, currently the TSA only has oral assessments on English and Cantonese but not on Putonghua, and therefore it is difficult for primary schools to know their graduates’ proficiency level in Putonghua. The EDB and the HKEAA should consider modifying the existing TSA or develop new mechanism so that students’ proficiency of the three languages can be assessed properly. Regarding the collaboration between different subject teachers using different medium of instruction, although it is not a common practice in Hong Kong primary schools, a range of examples of collaboration have been reported by the surveyed schools, showing that efforts have been made in this area in recent years. When asked about difficulties encountered in the implementation of trilingual education, the surveyed schools found that finding qualified and suitable teaching staff was the biggest challenge. Around half of the schools also found that students’ low level of English standards has hindered the implementation of trilingual education. Although the current survey covered 155 primary schools, it has its limitations, and follow-up case studies in selected primary schools are needed to answer some of the unanswered questions. For example: what is the rationale behind adopting different MoIs in teaching different subjects? Do the origins of students affect the MoI policies in schools? Are there conflicts between the school’s language policies and teachers’ real practices in the classroom? What is the real picture of code-switching between different languages in real classrooms? What are teachers’, students’ and parents’ views towards trilingual education? How confident are students themselves in achieving good proficiency in the three languages when they graduate? These questions will be explored in the following four chapters through detailed analysis of three case studies.

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