Job Discussion Forums

[hkteach]

Hi all, just thought I'd share this with you...................

This morning I had the following conversation with the company I use to do repairs to electricity,gas and home appliances:-

ME: Good morning.
SHE: Good morning. How can I help you?
ME: Last week your company repaired my hot water service and I need a receipt please.
SHE: Oh, you want hot water repaired?
ME: No, it's already repaired.....I need a receipt.
SHE: ............................................................................
ME: (now clutching at straws) Er, last week, Saturday, your company came to my home to repair the hot water. Now I need a receipt please. For my landlord.
SHE: ........................................
ME: Ok, can I speak to your boss please ? (I know the boss speaks English)
SHE: Boss not here - come back maybe 1 hour.
ME: Ok, I will leave my telephone number. Please ask your boss to call me later ok?
SHE: Ok.

It's now almost two hours and there's been no phone call. I don't expect one any time soon.

This kind of situation is all too common in Hong Kong - a city vying for the mantle of Asia's No. 1 city, but where the level of English of the general population is so poor that communication is a major issue.

This company is a major company in its field (so no doubt they have a lot of calls from 'gweilos') yet their phone staff don't speak enough basic English to handle such calls.

Why should this be??? This person has no doubt attended school to about year 10, English courses/Business English courses abound here and language schools and centres are so thick on the ground that I doubt if anyone doesn't pass several between home and work.

It's another example of the prevailing attitude among a big percentage of the locals that one just doesn't need English.

[anninhk]

Unfortunately it is a sad reflection of the system of education. How can you justify a system where children are subjected to 9 English lessons a week for 6 years in Primary school and then a similar number 5 years in secondary and are not able to say anything, read anything or understand anything in English?

[YellowHair]

From my experience, most English lessons here are conducted around themes.

The themes are then acted out in role-playing.

Since memorization is one of the most common teaching methods found in many of the classrooms, the children only memorize how to use certain phrases for certain situations centered around the themes.

This topic has been discussed before. The students can apply their language skills to a certain topic or reply in cookie cutter fashion. However, when the presentation of the language is presented even in a slightly different manner, they do not know how to reply.

Ex. 1 A:"How are you?"
B: "I am fine, thank you."

Ex. 2 A: "How are you, today?"
B: ".............."

The problem is that the overall educational system here does not focus on the English language as a means of free-based communication. They focus on language as a means of communicating in certain preset situations.

[lambada]

Not sure if this is relevant, but in my experience, Native English speakers tend to say too much, too fast and too indirectly. Not that I am suggesting teacher talk, but I know I never get anything sorted out if I try to deal with more than one issue or used long sentences building up to the question - which, of course, we do all the time in English. Now I just say one simple sentence and repeat it or vary it slightly. eg I need a receipt please. Give me a receipt please etc. Then, in answer to when was it done? Just the date, then the address and so on. Hard when it is spur of the moment situations. I watched someone in the 7/11 trying to pay a bill and then fax it to someone. Complete chaos. As 2 separate procedures - no problem. I have a theory that few people in HK listen beyond the first sentence so you have to get it said directly and immediately. Someone who understands Cantonese discourse might be able to able to clarify whether there is any truth in my theory.

[hkteach]

To Yellowhair yes, I agree with the learners being taught in such a drill and rote style that they can't apply their 'learning' to another almost identical situation ...
another example of a typical response
T: Hello. How are you today?
S: I am nine years old.

Lambada, yes, I realise that we tend to speak too quickly, speak too fast and I am very conscious of this. Usually in such situations I omit the unnecessary elements (articles, some adjectives, participles etc.) and this results in some truly awful English (so much for being a role model) but this is usually the way to make the meaning understood.

Often I resort to gestures, facial expressions and other body language to assist but seeing that can't be done over the phone, communication becomes more difficult.

I am becoming conscious of the fact that my speech has slowed and I use some expressions/shortened forms I'd never used before I came here ("no need" "never mind" "take a rest"). and I'd better get I go home for the summer, otherwise my friends are going to wonder what I'm saying!!

I did say I wasn't expecting a response any time soon but it's now 8 hours since I made the phone call and still waiting for the boss to call back 'in one hour'.

[11:59]

From 'The Games Hong Kong People Play: A Social Psychology of the Hong Kong Chinese', (George Adams, 1991):

"I Really Must Do Something About My English (IRMDSAME)

Although people have achieved success with English in Hong Kong, English itself has not been very successful. The language is often learned from the age of two-and-a-half on yet very few Hong Kong people speak it really accurately or well compared say with India, Singapore or some African countries. These are probably not fair comparisons. English is of course an auxiliary language in Hong Kong, not a lingua franca, and is drowned out by Cantonese culture. The facilities for learning the language are however very good and people who want to learn it have excellent opportunities for doing so. Students are far from convinced of this and often complain of "Lack Of Opportunities To Practice" (LOOP).

Psychodynamically speaking, English in Hong Kong is best understood as a Parental language: that is a language associated with power, success and even duty. Real Hong Kong parents expect their children to learn it even if they themselves make no effort to learn it. Students are led to believe, through the confusing device of being taught in a bewildering mixture of Chinese and English, that fluency in English is impossible. As few teachers or anyone else show enthusiasm about English, it is held to be uninteresting and a little like Latin was to schoolchildren in Britain. English is forced down students' throats and treated as a formal asset, not a liberating creative tool. By the time the students reach the higher forms in secondary school and possibly before then, they suffer under a schizoid attitude to English: they want it but they don't. They want it because it makes study easier (and higher education is virtually impossible without it). They don't want it because they have been conditioned to regarding it as a bit of a grind. The game of IRMDSAME is now ready to be played.

Languages can't be learned like mathematics because they are very personal and intimate things which involve the whole of the personality. One part of the IRMDSAME player really wants to learn English and looks for extra courses, buys the Reader's Digest Big Book Of English Words and tries to steer his eyes away from the subtitles on the English TV channels. Another part of him, perhaps more powerful than his conscious self knows, is certain that English is very dull and that it is associated with strange unknown people and places his parents have always treated with disinterest if not mistrust. The game is played to partially reconcile the paradox in attitude. A student enrols for extra lessons but does not exploit classroom time to practice; he drops out because the course is too far away from home; he refuses to practice English with strangers; he doesn't buy one of the excellent English newspapers (too difficult) and doesn't listen to the radio (can't follow); he spends hours in the library producing reports which would take fifteen minutes if he were fluent in English. He becomes more aware that he really must do something about his English but doesn't know what. At the end he can say "At Least I Tried" with the absolute conviction that he did his best. The Hong Kong Language Campaign or the British Council attempts to rescue him. The antithesis to the game is presented in my previous volume, Transactional Analysis in Education. Teachers in Hong Kong are devoted players of the complementary game, "I Really Must Do Something About My Teaching" and are often unaffected by long courses in didactics, humanistic education and educational psychology. "I Really Must Do Something About My Cantonese" is played by foreigners who never acquire even a smattering of the local language although numerous Chinese dictionaries and Cantonese courses stand on their bookshelves as an expression of their willingness to "be with the people".

ANALYSIS

Thesis: English is useful but it can't be fun.

Aim: Relief of Parent/Child impasse.

Roles: Learner, Teacher; Real Child, Real Parent; Student, Subject.

Dynamics: Masochism.

Moves:

1. I really must do something about my English!
2. At least I tried.

Switch: Too close for comfort.

Payoff: English really is difficult, isn't it?

Advantages:

Psychological: reinforces favoured learning style

Social: Group cohesion; TEFL book sales; demand for English teachers and social standing of fluent English speakers."

Full text available at:

http://www.ntscmp.com/GAMES%20HONG%20KONG%20PEOPLE%20PLAY%20BY%20GEORGE%20ADAMS%201.htm

[Henry_Cowell]

Thanks, Ludwig/Bertrand/Anthony/klaus.

Is your dissertation still unfinished? Nothing published since 1991?