What is it about?

This paper will first discuss why the TaB target is such a tall order for Cantonese-dominant students by reviewing the relevant literature along five inter-related dimensions: contrastive linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and instructional strategies and bilingual pedagogies. It will then examine the SAR government’s language support measures to assess their effectiveness and explore possible alternatives. The paper will end with a number of recommendations, which together constitute an LPP (language policy and planning) roadmap for improving the chance with which the TaB policy is likely to produce more positive outcomes.

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Why is it important?

After the Second World War, English has emerged as a de facto global lingua franca, an important or even indispensable form of linguistic capital. Today, native speakers of English are increasingly outnumbered by non-native speakers who learn English as a second or foreign language. Mastering ‘good English’, however, is anything but obvious for many. Given strong empirical evidence of children’s immense potential in additional language learning, especially during the ‘golden window’ from age 4 to 8, this article explains why, in the context of Hong Kong, it is important for the Special Administrative Region government to redirect resources in the education domain, with a view to providing quality language input in Putonghua and English in Early Childhood Education (ECE), notably K1–K3 (age 4–6) and P1–P3 (age 6–8). This policy-line is arguably crucial for meeting the SAR government’s TaB goal of graduating secondary and university students with competence in three spoken languages (Putonghua, English in addition to Cantonese) and two written languages (Chinese and English). Effective implementation takes time and requires concerted efforts of various stakeholders, which is why it is not too early to start planning.

Perspectives

While the primary focus of this article is on Hong Kong, it is believed that the proposed language-in-education policy has some reference value for countries or territories where a high level of proficiency in English is an important part of the local educational objectives.

David C. S. Li
Hong Kong Polytechnic University

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This page is a summary of: Trilingual and biliterate language education policy in Hong Kong: past, present and future, Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education, October 2022, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1186/s40862-022-00168-z.
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