English Teachers Are Happy To Share

English Teachers Are Happy To Share

Random Thoughts by Pauline


No short-cut
I have often been approached for tips to master the English language. Every time, I would give an answer more like a cliché reply and people would think I am brushing them off.

Listen more! Speak more! Read more! Write more! Think in English more!

I am serious! I have been doing so ever since I was introduced this second language. Those who are not able to reach satisfactory English proficiency like to complain or rather excuse themselves saying that there is a lack of English language environment in Hong Kong.  I cannot agree with that. Hong Kong, a former British colony and branded as “Asia's world city” since 2001, abounds with English not only verbally and literally but also in the wide world of internet. An English environment is at our fingertips.

Then what has gone wrong that has thrown Hong Kong down to the category of “moderate proficiency” in a 2018 study of English proficiency in countries where the language is not the mother tongue?  Scoring 56.38, Hong Kong was ranked 30 just above South Korea with a score of 56.27. We can, of course, doubt the validity of this study but proactively speaking, we can take this as a chance for reflection.

Among others, the post-1997 cocoon mentality may be the main reason. Since or even prior to 1997 and especially after China’s rise in world status, many in Hong Kong and not only the young have been gloating that English would no longer be as important as it has been and that Chinese will soon replace English as the world lingua franca. This complacency is pure naivety. The position of English as a world language has not been built over decades but centuries. True, Chinese as a language is gaining international recognition and popularity and a day will come when it might be the one language for world communication. But we do not have to sit there and do nothing to wait for it to happen not to say, it might not happen in our life time.

It is this ignorance that has ostracized our young people into eluding the hardship of mastering English language. But no pain, no gain. There is only one straight road – surrounding ourselves with an English environment. Back then when I was at school, I would have to resort to listening to radio or spending a fortune to purchase cassette tapes.  Books would be in the library. There were English-speaking television programmes but they were quite limited and television sets themselves were luxury items. Now, the internet provides all that we want or desire. So nurture that thirst for English and you are already one step closer to mastering the language!