RAISING ENGLISH LANGUAGE STANDARDS IN HONG KONG ...

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Since Hong Kong was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the place of ..... Hong Kong language policy is the employment of native speaker teachers in the ...
VIVIEN BERRY and ARTHUR MCNEILL

RAISING ENGLISH LANGUAGE STANDARDS IN HONG KONG (Received 2 March 2005; accepted in revised form 8 July 2005)

ABSTRACT. Despite the return of sovereignty to China in 1997, the Hong Kong government acknowledges that a high level of English language ability is still required among the workforce in order to maintain Hong Kong’’s position as an international commercial centre. Although there is no shortage of willingness on the part of the government to introduce measures to improve worrying English language standards, implementing such innovations has proved difficult. After briefly outlining several measures introduced over the past 20 years, we examine two specific language policy innovations: the introduction of a public examination format designed to have a beneficial washback effect on teaching and the employment of hundreds of native English speakers to teach English in the primary and secondary sectors. We conclude that although both measures are potentially valuable means of bringing about improvements in language learning, they need to be handled with caution if they are to form part of strategic language policy. KEY WORDS: English language enhancement, English language standards, examination washback, Hong Kong, native English speaker teachers

Introduction Since Hong Kong was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the place of English in the former British colony has had to be reexamined. On the one hand is the perfectly comprehensible desire to be divested of all trappings of the colonial past; on the other is the knowledge that Hong Kong’’s viability in the commercial world is largely dependent on its positioning as a knowledge-based, international business community. To achieve this, the Hong Kong government has undertaken to develop a trilingual, biliterate society which recognizes the commensurability of spoken Cantonese, standard Mandarin (Putonghua) and English and written standard Chinese and English. The legal basis for this linguistic formula is Language Policy (2005) 4: 371–394 DOI 10.1007/s10993-005-2887-z

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enshrined in the Basic Law (1990), which states that both Chinese and English may be used as official languages. Despite the fact that there has been recent acknowledgment of the importance of the national language, Mandarin (Putonghua), both the government and the community at large continue to recognize that a high level of English language ability among the workforce is essential. As a recent report argues: ‘‘Hong Kong does have a practical need for a workforce with a high level of English proficiency in order to maintain her competitiveness as an international commercial and financial centre.’’ (Education Commission, 2005: 5). Accepting this, the Hong Kong government has tried very hard to come up with a strategic policy for English language improvement. Measures intended to strengthen language proficiency have been announced in a number of annual policy addresses and in a succession of Education Commission reports for over the past 20 years. These include: (a) a reform of the primary curriculum intended to engage young pupils more actively in language use; (b) the employment of native English speakers to teach English in primary and secondary schools; (c) the introduction of new public examination formats which include spoken English (d) the introduction of a medium of instruction policy restricting English-medium secondary education; (e) the allocation of grants to universities for language enhancement provision;1 (f) the launching of a Workplace English Campaign; (g) the introduction of benchmark tests to assess the English language ability of teachers and (h) an initiative to refund examination fees for students who take the International English Language Testing Systems (IELTS) test before graduation. In addition to specific language enhancement measures, in 1996 the government also established the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research--SCOLAR (sic), whose brief was threefold: ‘‘(1) to conduct research into the language needs of Hong Kong, (2) to develop policies designed to meet those needs, and (3) to monitor and evaluate those policies in a systematic and coherent manner.’’ (Education Commission, 1996: 2). A central argument of this article is that plans for implementing new measures are not drafted in sufficient detail at the outset. As we will demonstrate, although there is no shortage of ideas in 1 The eight University Grants Commission funded institutions are: City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Lingnan University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and The University of Hong Kong.

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response to worrying English language standards and there is plenty of courage on the part of the government in embracing bold solutions, a coherent policy for the development of English in Hong Kong is harder to identify. Perhaps the spirit of enterprise, which has helped to shape Hong Kong’’s economic success, encourages an element of risk-taking in educational policy. However, high-risk language policy measures need to be implemented with great care. The laissez-faire approach, which is associated positively with economic growth does not always lead to success in educational terms.

The Role of English within the Hong Kong Educational System One of the main obstacles to articulating a policy for English has been a lack of clarity about the role of English within the education system and its status as a medium of instruction in the majority of secondary schools. As Johnson (1996: 126) points out, the report of the working group set up to review language improvement measures (Education Department, 1989) identified medium of instruction rather than inadequate language teaching as the major problem facing policy makers. Chinese (Cantonese) has become the medium of instruction in most schools, with English-medium education reserved for schools with more able students and where the schools can demonstrate that they can meet the pre-requisite conditions for additive bilingualism. Understandably, the new medium of instruction policy attracted interest and criticism when it was first introduced in the early 1990s, although it did not become fully implemented until 1998 (Johnson, 1998; Poon, 1998; Tsui, 1993, inter alia). While the Government continues to argue its ground in terms of the educational advantages of studying through the mother tongue, many parents remain concerned that children denied English-medium education may have less opportunity for places in higher education and may be regarded as second-class students. Whatever one’’s view of the medium of instruction policy, the introduction of Chinese as the main teaching medium initially helped to clarify the status of English in the education system; for the majority of students English was just another school subject, rather than a medium of study. However, although the first students to complete secondary education under the new medium of instruction policy will not leave secondary Form 7 and enter

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tertiary institutions until 2005, within two years of implementing the policy, a Working Group on medium of instruction was already making recommendations to the government to introduce modifications. For example, the Medium of Instruction Guidance for Secondary Schools released in September 1997 stated that: schools using Chinese as medium of instruction for their junior students may switch to use English as the medium of instruction (EMI) for certain subjects in some classes at Secondary 4 and 5, provided that the subject teachers concerned have the requisite capability, students can effectively learn with EMI and the schools could afford adequate support. (Education and Manpower Bureau Press Release, September 1, 2000)

At the time, no guidance was provided as to what constituted teachers’’ ‘‘capability’’, which can mean competence in colloquial English, competence in academic English and/or competence in performance of western language teaching methodologies; a review of medium of instruction issues (Education Commission, 2005) has recently defined teacher capability in terms of grades achieved on English language tests. However, in order to leave as many options open for teacher qualification as possible, the review offers a ‘‘get out of jail’’ card for those teachers who do not hold the requisite qualifications (and, somewhat astonishingly, these include merely having achieved Grade C on the Hong Kong Certificate of Education, an examination taken at the age of 16). These teachers can: opt for classroom observation by both subject and language experts appointed by the Education and Manpower Bureau to assess their overall capability to teach through English, viz. ‘‘to communicate the subject content intelligibly and their use of English should have no adverse impact on students’’ acquisition of the English language’’. (Education Commission, 2005: 46)

Again, no guidelines are offered as to how the subject and language experts, together or separately, will determine whether or not teachers’’ language impacts on students’’ acquisition of English. Nor is it obvious whether this classroom observation will consist of a single snapshot or a systematic series of observations carried out over a range of classes, over a period of time. It is clear, therefore, that the issue of medium of instruction in Hong Kong’’s schools is not at all resolved and remains constantly under discussion. There is a clear link between medium of instruction and language improvement measures and it is to this latter aspect of language policy that we now turn. We shall first of all briefly look at test-driven measures that have been introduced in the workplace and tertiary sector. We will then examine in more detail two of the

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approaches that have been adopted to bring about improvement in levels of spoken English: examination washback effect and the native-speaker English teaching scheme.

English Language Improvement Measures Introduced by Successive Hong Kong Administrations Innovative schemes to improve English language skills can be grouped into three categories or levels to include the workplace, tertiary education and school-based measures. Workplace Measures – the Workplace English Campaign A funding scheme for workplace English language training, predicated on the belief that employees should have a sufficiently clear understanding of employers’’ expectation of their English standard to work out a self-improvement target for career development, was introduced in February 2000. Six categories of jobs are identified, and both spoken and written English benchmark levels are specified, aligned to business English tests administered by four internationally recognized examination bodies. Employees are encouraged to undertake training for an appropriate test, for which a substantial sum of government funding is available, although this funding is not disbursed until candidates have achieved a specified level of English language proficiency on the chosen test.2 Little thought seems to have been given to the fact that it is probably those who do not meet the minimum requirements who are, in fact, most in need of training. Tertiary Education Measures Tertiary education language enhancement measures can be further sub-divided into what can be characterized as ‘‘carrot and stick’’ approaches. The former is concerned with providing language skills

2 The four tests are the Business Language Testing Service (BULATS), see http://www. ucles.org.uk, English Language Skills Assessment (ELSA), see http://www.lccieb.com/LCCI/ Home/ELSA.asp/, Test of English for International Cooperation (TOEIC), see http:// www.toeic.com/ and Pitman’’s Tests of English for Speakers of Other Languages (EOS1; EOS2), see http://www.city-and-guilds.com.hk/pq/wpestart.htm. For a full description of this Hong Kong Workplace English Benchmarks, see http://www.English.gov.hk/Text/benchmarking/ hk_benchmark.htm

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training and to this end, over more than a decade, upwards of a billion Hong Kong dollars3 has been allocated in grants to the eight University Grants Commission-funded tertiary institutions for both English and Putonghua language enhancement provision. The latter approach takes the view most commonly held in Hong Kong that the best way to force students to improve their language skills is to test them. Tung Chee-Hwa, the former Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, announced in his first Policy Address that he hoped tertiary institutions would consider introducing a requirement for all graduating students to take proficiency tests in English and Chinese. In fact, at the time of his speech, the Graduating Students Language Proficiency Assessment was already in the process of being developed, trialled and prepared for implementation (Lumley & Qian, 2003). For many reasons, partly to do with inter-institutional rivalry, but also for sound pedagogical reasons (cf. Madaus, 1988; Shepard, 1993; Shohamy, 2001), this request was initially not given very much credence by Hong Kong’’s tertiary institutions. However, when a working group was established to examine the effectiveness of the disbursement of language enhancement grants, and it became immediately apparent that there was a possibility of repercussions in the form of reduced grants, university heads felt obligated to support the government’’s call for the introduction of an exit test (Berry & Lewkowicz, 2000, 2004). In his call for an exit-test, the Chief Executive may have been hoping to instigate a system of accountability such as that outlined by President Clinton in 1999 and reiterated by President Bush in 2001, who demanded a package of ‘‘accountability measures’’ for students, teachers and schools; measures intended to both reward and punish schools on the basis of results obtained on standardized tests. Although there is no suggestion that the introduction of an exit-test for Hong Kong students represents an attempt by the government to punish either students or individual departments and institutions, there is, nevertheless, a discernible hint of ‘‘accountability’’ attached to the proposal. League tables of institutional performance on everything from numbers of students to academic research output to rankings within the international community are published annually. Since it has been suggested that, in future, funding from the University Grants 3 The Hong Kong dollar is pegged to the US dollar with an exchange rate of approximately 7.8 Hong Kong dollars to US$1.

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Committee to tertiary institutions in the form of block grants will be contingent upon evidence of excellence rather than on a straightforward basis of student numbers, as is the case at present, there is ample precedent to suggest that the compulsory introduction of a uniform exit test would serve to provide another tool by which the comparative effectiveness of English enhancement courses across institutions could be gauged.4 The selection of an appropriate exit test also initially proved problematic (Berry & Lewkowicz, 2000; Li, 1997). Having already spent several million HK dollars on the development of the Graduating Students Language Proficiency Assessment, an exit-test specifically designed to ‘‘help employers choose employees whose English is at the right standard for the company’’s needs’’ (Hamp-Lyons, 1999: 139), the University Grants Committee eventually decided to import a standardized overseas-developed test of English language proficiency, the International English Language Testing Systems (IELTS) test. It is important to note that taking the test is not yet compulsory; nevertheless a number of major employers, including the Civil Service, have recently stated that they require applicants to have attained a specified IELTS level. School-Based Measures Numerous measures have been introduced into the school sector to encompass primary and secondary students and teachers. These include further test-driven initiatives such as the development of a battery of new benchmark tests, the Language Proficiency Assessment of Teachers of English (LPATE), to assess the English language ability of teachers in an attempt to increase the effectiveness of the teaching profession. This measure has proved particularly controversial due to the relatively high failure rate at each administration. After each administration of the Language Proficiency Assessment of Teachers of English, pass (and failure) rates are publicized leading to humiliation and anxiety for both local and native English speaking teachers who have not succeeded in achieving the required standard. We are not, of course, arguing that language teachers do not need to be competent in their chosen field. Untrained, unqualified and ineffective teachers, who in an ideal world would not have been employed in the first place, must be 4 Students have widely differing initial English language proficiency levels on admission to the eight institutions and therefore each devises its own, independent, English enhancement courses to best cater for specific student needs.

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replaced at the earliest possible opportunity by those who are more capable. However, it can be argued that as a single measure the Language Proficiency Assessment of Teachers of English may not represent an adequate and fully comprehensive gauge of teachers’’ ability to teach English, particularly at primary levels when there is no requirement for teachers to provide detailed feedback on students’’ errors such as that demanded of Paper 2 of the Writing test.5 In addition, Part 2 of the Speaking test consists of a group oral interaction and, as research has shown, this may constitute a source of bias against certain groups of candidates (Berry, 2004). From the government’’s point of view, though, it is a very effective means of maintaining a high profile in convincing the general public of the sincerity of their quest to improve language standards. Pedagogical innovations introduced include a major initiative to reform the primary curriculum along task-based principles, intended to engage young learners more actively in language use (Clark, Scarino, & Brownell, 1994; Morris, 1999). However this ‘‘very worthy venture’’ (Hamp-Lyons, 1999: 137) has already been all but abandoned, partly because of its complexity and the very high level of teaching skills required, but, more importantly, because it was never properly accepted by the very teachers who were meant to implement it. Primary teachers stated that they neither comprehended the underlying philosophy of the TargetOriented Curriculum nor could they cope practically with the increase in workload it entailed (Lee, 1999). As with the Language Proficiency Assessment of Teachers of English benchmarks test for teachers, public conflicts between government and teachers could probably have been avoided, or at least mitigated, if the major stakeholders had been consulted throughout the development process. More recent school-based reforms, which have had long consultation processes, include the introduction of Basic Competency Assessment (BCA) in 2003 in primary schools and 2004 in some secondary schools. The aim of Basic Competency Assessment, which is intended to be in effect in all schools from 2005, is to facilitate learning and teaching in the three key areas of English and Chinese language and mathematics from Primary 1 to Secondary 3.6 At higher levels, the introduction of a School-Based Assessment (SBA) component into the 2007 English oral exami5 For examples of the types of test tasks in the Language Proficiency Assessment of Teachers of English, see http://www.emb.gov.hk/FileManager/EN/Content_1425/prof_ass3.pdf. 6 For more information on BCA, see http://www.hkbca.edu.hk/index_eng.htm.

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nation aims to align assessment more closely with the current English language teaching syllabus, which advocates task-based teaching (Curriculum Development Council, 1999). It will be interesting to look back in 10 years’’ time and see if these policies have had more success in improving language standards than their forerunners. The introduction of the above measures in the workplace and the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors demonstrates that the Hong Kong government has tried extremely hard to come up with a strategic language policy, as far as English language is concerned. Unfortunately, the implementation of these policy changes has not always been as successful as might have been hoped. Perhaps lack of clarity about which body is responsible for the detailed implementation of the various measures has meant that, in practice, individual institutions have interpreted policies in different ways. As discussed, the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research is the body responsible for identifying, developing and evaluating policies to address changing language needs. However, it is not part of the committee’’s brief to produce specific guidelines for their practical implementation. Two further language policy innovations that seem to have a very tenuous link with principled policy implementation are worthy of being looked at in more detail. The pedagogical principles inherent in task-based learning also led to the introduction, in 1993, of new public examination formats at Secondary 5 and 7 (ages 16 and 18). These revised examinations include a spoken English component, designed to have a beneficial washback effect on teaching. However, the introduction of this oral component has had a surprising and totally unexpected impact on the tertiary sector. Recent research findings show that since the introduction of the group oral test, the mean level of extraversion, as measured by the standardized Cantonese version of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck & Chan, 1982) of students admitted into the University of Hong Kong, has increased significantly and it is therefore suggested that this format may be biased against candidates possessing certain personality characteristics (Berry, 2004). A necessary corollary to the introduction of the oral component was the employment of hundreds of native English speakers to teach English in secondary schools, which was extended to include all primary schools from September 2002. In the following two sections we will discuss each of these measures in some detail.

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The Role of ‘‘Washback’’ in Formulating Educational Policy In an English language learning context, washback can be defined as ‘‘the extent to which the use of a test influences language teachers and learners to do things they would not otherwise do that promote or inhibit learning’’ (Messick, 1996: 241). The introduction of a new oral format for the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination in English (HKCEE), and the development of the oral component in the A/S level Use of English (UE), in 1993 and 1994 were effected deliberately in an attempt to change teaching practices. Discussing the introduction of the new Use of English oral component, King (1994: 11) informs us: ‘‘As always, the aim was to produce a positive washback effect on teaching throughout the whole of the sixth-form course.’’ The Hong Kong Use of English A/S level Examination is taken by around 20,000 candidates every year. As a quasi-governmental agency, the costs of the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority’’s (HKEAA) in developing, administering and validating the examination are generally passed on to candidates as examination fees (Andrews & Fullilove, 1994: 84). Consequently, one of the major considerations of the Oral Working Party, which was set up in October 1990 to examine the feasibility of including an oral component into the test battery, was what they euphemistically labeled a ‘‘Real world’’ consideration, namely the amount of manpower required relative to the cost incurred. In other words, they wanted an innovative new test, which would have a powerful impact on language teaching throughout the sixth-form, but they wanted it as cheaply as they could possibly get it. Economic reasons were also the driving force behind the decision to use a group oral test as the sole means of assessment of oral ability in Zambia, since large numbers of candidates can be tested in groups in a much shorter, less labor intensive (and therefore less expensive), time than in a traditional oral interview (Hilsdon, 1991). Unfortunately, as Spolsky’’s (1990: 11) understated parenthesis reminds us: The less important the results will be to the future career of the test taker, the more we are justified in what testers call quick and dirty tests. Conversely, the more important the results, the larger the rewards and punishments, the more detailed and precise and varied (and expensive) the test itself should be.

It can hardly be denied that where the results of a test can prescribe the exclusion of children from senior secondary school

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(as in Zambia) or tertiary education (as in Hong Kong), the rewards and punishments involved are very large indeed. Notwithstanding the stated motivation for introducing the new test in Hong Kong, Andrews and Fullilove (1994: 64) inform us that in the design of the new test they were concerned that: ‘‘as far as possible the test should embody the characteristics of a ‘good’ test.’’ Without actually specifying what they consider the ‘‘characteristics of a good test’’ to be, they set out to achieve this aim by identifying three Ideal World considerations relating to more detailed aspects of the design of the oral component to complement and provide a pedagogic balance to the Real World consideration mentioned above. The third Ideal world consideration is as follows: Would the proposed test tasks and test format be likely to exert a positive influence on classroom teaching (washback)?

One of the major issues within the field of assessment in the 1990s has been a concern with the systemic validity of tests-the so-called washback effect or the effect a test has on classroom practice (Madaus, 1988; Messick, 1996). Reports from a number of empirical, classroom-based studies (Alderson & Hamp-Lyons, 1996; Alderson & Wall, 1992, 1993; Andrews, Fullilove, & Wong, 2002; Cheng, 1997, 1998; Wall, 1994; Wall & Alderson, 1993; Watanabe, 1996) show that the relationship between tests and classroom practice is very much more complex than originally thought. Alderson and Wall’’s (1993) study of the impact of the Sri Lankan O-level English exam on teaching showed that the test had considerable impact on the content of the lessons but little or no influence on the methodology teachers used in the classrooms. Similarly, in a study designed to investigate the washback effect of TOEFL, Alderson and Hamp-Lyons (1996) found that although there is a clear effect both for what and how teachers teach, the ‘‘washback intensity’’ (Cheng, 1997) of the TOEFL differs from teacher to teacher. They conclude that ‘‘...the generalized assertions about washback that abound in the literature and in the ESL/EFL profession are too simplistic.’’ (Alderson & Hamp-Lyons, 1996: 295). With regard to the two Hong Kong tests discussed in this section, several research studies into various aspects of the effect of examination reform have been conducted and the conclusions reached are not encouraging. Following an exhaustive study of the introduction of the new oral format of the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination in English, Cheng (1997, 1998) concluded that changes in teaching and learning brought about by

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the introduction of the new oral format were largely superficial and more a matter of form than of substance. She also concluded that the argument: ‘‘If we don’’t test it, they won’’t teach it!’’ (King, 1994: 11), was ‘‘simplistic and naı¨ ve’’ (Cheng, 1997: 297). Andrews et al. (2002) found conclusive evidence of the impact of published materials on various stages of the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority Use of English group discussion. However, rather than being able to point to the positive washback effect the original test designers had hoped to achieve, the researchers conclude that the major washback effect: ‘‘seems to represent a very superficial level of learning outcome: familiarization with the exam format, and the rote-learning of exam-specific strategies and formulaic phrases.’’ (Andrews et al., 2002: 220). Despite these negative findings there are clearly numerous advantages to testing students in groups, not least of which is the similarity that is perceived by students between the assessment task and classroom practice, which often emphasizes group collaboration and cooperation. If teachers can be persuaded to use group discussions to foster genuine interaction amongst students and do not simply promote the rote-learning of formulaic oral gambits in an attempt to raise test scores, then the introduction of the group oral test will have achieved its aim of having positive washback in the classroom. However, as an instrument for testing oral proficiency, it should be treated with the utmost caution and should only be included as one part of an oral test battery (Berry, 2004; Bonk & Ockey, 2003; Shohamy, Reves, & Bejarano, 1986).

The English Native Speaker in Hong Kong Schools The other Government scheme to be discussed in connection with Hong Kong language policy is the employment of native speaker teachers in the school system. For many years, schools have employed English native speakers on an ad hoc basis. However, two Government initiatives brought about the large-scale recruitment of native English speaking teachers (NETs) into the school system, first in the late 1980s and again in the late 1990s. While the 1980s’’ scheme was relatively modest in scale and initially recruited only thirty teachers in 1987, the recent initiative is more ambitious as the Hong Kong Government undertook to provide one native English speaking teacher for each public sector secondary school, up to two native English speaking teachers for schools using Chinese as

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the medium of instruction from the 1998–1999 school year and one native English speaking teacher for every two primary schools from 2002. This importation of English native speaker teachers into schools in Asia is currently being carried out on a very large scale, not only in Hong Kong, but also in Singapore, Japan, Taiwan and China. The recent enthusiasm for native speaker teachers in Asia coincides with interesting developments in research into both native and nonnative speaker teachers. The respective knowledge bases of native and non-native speaker teachers and their levels of metalinguistic awareness are the subject of research reported in recent edited works by Bartels (2005) and Lurda (2005). It may indeed take some time before the implications of this research for the deployment of native and non-native speakers are fully worked out. However, interest in the notion and characteristics of the native speaker in applied linguistics has been active for some time and the widely held assumption that the native speaker teacher is superior to the non-native has been challenged (e.g., Medgyes, 1992). In fact, the usefulness of the term ‘‘native speaker’’ has been called into question, both in recognition of the language competence required of successful teachers (Cook, 1999) and in response to the huge increase in the number of English users globally (Crystal, 1997). Cook (1999) suggests that successful non-native speakers can provide more appropriate illustrations of the target competencies which ought to be set for language learners than the more traditional reliance on native-speaker norms. He points out that second language learners, by definition, can never become native speakers of a second language and questions whether the native speaker is a suitable reference point for language learners. Davies (1991) argues that the distinction between the two is far from clear-cut, especially when deciding on the status of near-native speakers, whose knowledge about language is generally superior to that of most native speakers. Paikeday (1985) even proposes that the distinction between native and non-native speaker is meaningless, at least in the linguist’’s sense of the native speaker as arbiter of grammaticality and acceptability of language. Research based on native and non-native speaker teachers in Hong Kong (Lin, 1999; McNeill, 1998) has shown that teachers who speak their students’’ mother tongue are generally more accurate in pinpointing sources of language difficulty for their learners than teachers who are not familiar with learners’’ first language. Studies in Hong Kong and elsewhere have suggested that non-native speaker teachers who possess

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a highly developed language awareness can be outstandingly effective teachers (Andrews & McNeill, 2005). So, what exactly prompted the Hong Kong Government to embark on the recent, large-scale recruitment exercise and how do they expect to derive maximum benefit from the presence of so many native speakers within the school system? Expectations of native speaker teachers’’ contributions appear to have shifted during the past 20 years. The first native English speaking teacher recruitment exercise in Hong Kong was largely prompted by recommendations of a visiting panel in 1982 who expressed concerns about the ‘‘localization’’ of English teaching which, the panel believed, had led to a deterioration in English standards. We consider the ‘‘localization of staffing’’ policy ought to be amended so that children in their first years of schooling might be exposed to native English speakers, engaged as ancillary staff either on a contract basis or accepted as helpers (e.g., the non-working spouses of British expatriates or other suitable English speakers). (Visiting Panel, 1982: III.1.9)

The recommendation to recruit native speaker teachers was based on a desire to provide learners with a different type of language input, rather than to influence the way English was taught. The recommendation appears to assume that the native speakers would simply provide students with exposure to ‘‘real’’ English, while local teachers would deal with formal aspects of teaching, such as explanation and practice. Interestingly, when the actual recruitment of the native English speaking teachers took place, the Government only appointed trained and experienced language teachers. The new recruits, therefore, brought with them, in addition to their native English, expertise in and opinions about language teaching, which were often at variance with the prevailing local orthodoxy (Boyle, 1997). Leaving aside possible differences in their approaches to language teaching, the potential of the native English speaking teachers to provide much of the input that learners need to acquire a foreign language deserves attention. According to Krashen’’s (1980) input hypothesis, second language learners only acquire the language when they understand the input to which they are exposed. There is evidence (McNeill, 1996) that Hong Kong students and their teachers do not understand the meaning of many of the English words whose form they can recognize and even reproduce correctly. It would appear that generations of Hong Kong students, studying through the medium of English,

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have been exposed to English which was not comprehensible to them, but which they appear to have internalized at a formal rather than semantic level. Lack of comprehension on the part of students was not limited to the language produced by teachers. Some of the course books used for content subjects in English medium schools had such high levels of lexical density and new word density that few students could be expected to understand them (Williams & Dallas, 1984). However, for the majority of Hong Kong school children, by far the main source of English input is the language used by their teachers in school. There has been considerable research into the ways in which native speakers modify and control their language when communicating with non-native speakers, both at the level of syntax, lexis and phonology (Gaies, 1977; Henzl, 1979; Wagner-Gough & Hatch, 1975) and at a more interactional level (Gaies, 1982; Long, 1983a, 1983b). There is no question that native speaker English teachers represent an extremely rich source of language input. In a recent study, He (2004) analyzed data from a corpus of local English teachers’’ and native English teachers’’ use of verbs in classroom talk and found that locals tend to use an item in its basic sense, making a clear boundary between process types, whereas native English speaking teachers use a word in several different senses and in figurative speech, thus transforming one process to another. When hundreds of native speakers are introduced into an education system where the majority of the English teachers are not native speakers, the potential for providing language input, which is likely to make a real impact on learning is enormous. Unfortunately, however, there has been no clear policy about how the native speaker contribution to English teaching is supposed to operate and confusion still exists about how the native English speaking teachers should actually be deployed. In some cases, native English speaking teachers meet each of their classes only once per cycle and conduct a conversation-type class, while in other schools native English speaking teachers take full responsibility for several classes, just as the local non-native speaker teachers do. The Government envisages that the contribution of the native English speaking teachers will be wider than the direct impact they make upon their students in the classroom and that they will improve the language teaching culture through participation in extra-curricular activities. However, the actual roles that native English speaking teachers might play as resource persons and in teacher development are not specified. Their importance in

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contributing mainly to the development of spoken English appears to be unquestioned. Indeed, there appears to be a widely held assumption that native speakers are best used for oral work. Kramsch (1997: 359) offers an explanation for this view by referring to changes in language teaching methodology: In language pedagogy, the premium put on spoken communicative competence since the 1970s has endowed native speakers with a prestige they did not necessarily have in the 1950s and 1960s, when the grammar-translation and then the audiolingual methods of language teaching prevailed; today foreign language students are expected to emulate the communicative skills of native speakers.

According to Medgyes (1994), non-native speaker teachers tend to focus their attention on accuracy, especially grammatical accuracy, while native speakers are more likely to develop learners’’ fluency in English. This conclusion might, at first sight, add support to the view that native speakers are best deployed in oral lessons. However, Medgyes’’ research also reveals that the greatest worry of non-native speaker teachers is their inadequate command of English vocabulary. One of the main differences between the language competence of a native and non-native speaker is vocabulary size. While conservative estimates of the English vocabulary of educated native speakers lie in the region of 17,000 words (Goulden, Nation, & Read, 1990), the vocabulary size of non-native speaker adults is believed to be far lower. For example, Izawa’’s (1993) study of the English vocabulary of university teachers in Japan concluded that his colleagues’’ vocabulary size was around 7000 words. It seems obvious that native speaker teachers, with their generally superior command of the English lexical system, are ideally placed to provide learners with richer language input. It is unfortunate that the main differences between the language competences of native and non-native speakers are not fully recognized and exploited consciously in order to derive maximum benefit from the presence of the native speakers. Closely related to the notion of lexical knowledge is, of course, the socio-cultural knowledge, which native speakers bring with them from their own experience of the English-speaking world. As Kramsch (1998: 45–46) points out: foreign language education in the 90s is sensitive to the growing heterogeneity of modern societies and to the complex relationship of language and culture in a global world. It is increasingly concerned with learners’’ social and cultural identities rather than with student motivation, with variation in the type and level of speaker competence rather than with a unitary standard native speaker competence.

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The Hong Kong school population into which the native English speaking teachers are placed is ethnically and culturally quite homogeneous. There is an obvious need for increased socio-cultural awareness (i.e. awareness of other cultures) and the native English speaking teachers are ideally placed to provide it, both through the English language curriculum and through less formal interaction with students. However, although the potential of the native teachers to provide input for language acquisition and cultural knowledge is not yet recognized in terms of official language policy, a project set up in 1998 at the Hong Kong Institute of Education to review the effectiveness of the scheme may provide the Government with some guidelines which might eventually translate into official policy. The evaluation addressed the impact of the native English speaking teachers upon the local school culture as well as their contribution to students’’ language improvement. Not surprisingly, it was difficult to draw general conclusions about the latter since many other factors affect student learning. However, the evaluation team’’s main conclusion was that the scheme required far greater consideration of the complementary roles of the native and local teachers. As Storey et al. (2001: 44) advise: It is recommended that in future planning of the Native-speaking English teacher (NET) Scheme, the rationales underlying the differential duty allocations of local and NET teachers should be widely discussed in the school community to achieve a consensus acceptable to both parties. The present findings indicate that consensus is most likely to be found in the recognition of the cultural, language arts and extra-curricular roles of NETs. (Storey et al., 2001: 44)

To introduce the native English speaking teachers into the schools without making any changes to the existing system and culture was bound to produce problems, particularly if the Government wanted them to contribute to staff development. Although there have been a substantial number of school-based staff development initiatives in Hong Kong, these have generally been ad hoc. It was, therefore, not surprising that confusion arose concerning this aspect of the scheme since no guidelines were issued as to how native English speaking teachers might contribute to staff development. As the evaluation study concludes (Storey et al., 2001: 45), changes to the school culture should have been made as part of the exercise: In secondary schools, the effects of the native English speaking teachers are unlikely to be significant without a culture shift involving an orientation towards more professional collaboration between Panel members, and unless

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corresponding changes have been engineered to change the exam-oriented, textbook-based learning cultures of most schools in Hong Kong.

A disappointing conclusion of the study was that many of the native English speaking teachers who appeared, at first sight, to be well integrated within their schools had adopted the same textbook-based, examination-oriented approach to classroom teaching as their local colleagues. It was obviously not in the spirit of the scheme that such convergence of teaching methods should take place. However, the distinction between native input and instructional methods touches at the core of the tension between Chinese traditional values as embodied in their instructional methods, and globalization as manifested in Western communicative behaviors. In the absence of clearer guidelines about the contributions of native English speaking teachers, it is therefore not surprising that many teachers conform to what they assume are schools’’ expectations of them. Interestingly, the study also recommends that native English teachers will make a better contribution if they know something of their students’’ home language. As mentioned above, notions of the native speaker in language education are changing. While the monolingual English native speaker may be useful for some purposes, bilingual language teachers are more likely to have a serious impact upon language learning. Future involvement of native speaker teachers in schools needs to reflect current thinking about teachers’’ language competence. The painful and expensive lessons learned from the scheme are likely to be valuable not only to Hong Kong but also to education systems around the world, provided the analysis and recommendations of the evaluation team are heeded before new large-scale recruitment exercises are undertaken. A policy for the integration of native-speaker and local teachers might finally emerge, offering a sustainable solution rather than short-term fix.

Conclusion In this paper, we have briefly discussed a number of measures introduced with the aim of improving standards of English in Hong Kong. The major focus of our paper is on two instances of very expensive practical measures which we have examined in detail: the adoption of particular formats for public examinations,

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designed to influence classroom teaching of English through washback effect and the addition of one or two native speaker teachers of English to the staff of every secondary and primary school. The discussion of the measures recognized that both examination washback effect and native speaker teachers are potentially valuable means of bringing about change and improvement in language learning. However, they need to be handled with caution if they are to form part of strategic language policy. It is clear that washback does indeed bring about change in classroom practice. However, changes in teacher behavior in response to different examination formats do not necessarily result in improved teaching quality. Research has also shown that washback can be both positive and negative. Concerning the issue of native speaker teachers, their mere presence in a school cannot be relied upon to produce an improvement in the overall standard of English. Their use needs to be considered in the light of theoretical issues in second language learning and needs to reflect the characteristics that distinguish native speaker from non-native speaker teachers. These include socio-cultural knowledge of the English-speaking world and a superior lexical competence, which can have an important impact upon the input that their learners require for successful second language acquisition. The lack of a clear policy in the use of the native English speaking teachers has inevitably led to heated public debate about administrative issues such as terms and conditions of service, all of which has detracted from producing a strategy for using them which will be most beneficial for secondary school students. The important message for policy makers is that the elements, which they manipulate as part of their policy need to be fully understood, preferably before new measures are introduced. All too often, evaluation studies are commissioned once key decisions have been made and policies are already implemented. The desire for immediate results, which is common to politicians and education departments all over the developed and developing world, can lead to bold, entrepreneurial decisions, with evaluation projects tagged on almost as an apology for the lack of any feasibility or pilot study. It is often assumed that defects in the system can simply be remedied once the results of the evaluation are known. As we have seen, language policy discussion in Hong Kong has been dominated for many years by questions related to medium of instruction and this continues to be a major concern. Given the changed socio-political status of English in a community where

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98% of the population is native speakers of Cantonese, the time has perhaps come to put aside post-colonial angst about the importance of English in Hong Kong. For the vast majority of people, English is a foreign or second language. If there are market-driven requirements for fluency in English, the responsibility for satisfying the demand must be shared by all stakeholders. The extent to which school-based measures alone can bring about the required improvement in language standards is limited. Obviously, schools must have well-qualified, competent teachers. Universities must realize that their ambition to internationalize their student intake is dependent on their courses being taught in English rather than through an ad hoc mixture of English-language textbooks and lectures, with Chinese-language tutorials and seminars. Employers must accept that they have a responsibility to provide appropriate on-going training according to their changing language needs, including providing linguistic internships to schoolchildren and sending them abroad to study, etc., rather than simply requiring their staff to pass a particular language test. All these measures need to be implemented within the framework of a clearly articulated, comprehensive and coherent language policy developed to take account of the new challenges facing Hong Kong in the twenty-first century. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback and suggestions for improvement on a previous draft of this paper. REFERENCES Alderson, J. Charles & Hamp-Lyons, Liz (1996). TOEFL preparation course: a study of washback. Language Testing, 13, 280–297. Alderson, J. Charles & Wall, Dianne (1992). The Sri Lankan O-Level English language, valuation project, fourth and final report. Lancaster: Lancaster University. Alderson, J. Charles & Wall, Dianne (1993). Does washback exist? Applied Linguistics, 14, 115–129. Andrews, Stephen & Fullilove, John (1994). Assessing spoken English in public examinations – why and how? In Joseph Boyle & Peter Falvey (Eds), English language testing in Hong Kong (pp. 57–85). Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.

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The English Centre The University of Hong Kong Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong SAR, PRC E-mail: [email protected] ARTHUR MCNEILL

English Language Teaching Unit The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, New Territories Hong Kong SAR PRC