Saturday 30 May 2009

History/Language

Booklist: Modern Europe (1789 - present)

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It's good to learn history in English because you can at the same time improve your language. If I wasn't that like History when I was younger, my English would not be at this level (though still not enough to communicate with natives). I was lucky that I studied in an EMI school.

The government is now planing(or has decided already?) not to devide secondary schools into EMI/CMI, but put the students in English class or Chinese class depending on their English levels. The idea is stupid because students' proficientcy in language would vary when time goes by. It is not resonable to require students reciting "1-1-1 tetrachloromethane"/"Treaty of Versailles" when they're in an English class and the chinese expressions when they get promoted but into a Chinese class. If students have to learn in English at universities anyways, why not start teaching them in English in secondary schools? What's the point here saying that teaching students in English is not respacting our mother language?

Chinese language will definitely be the coming global language but English will still occupy an important role for centries. We are too lucky to have Chinese as our first language, why not develop our second language well on this vantage point?

HongKongers always regard ourselves better internationalized and we speak better English than people from the mainland. But when our students are playing NDS games, buying new cell phones and talking about love and sex, exchange students from the mainland are not only learning English here, but also French, Spanish and German.

Are we still confident that we cannot be replaced?

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