THE APPROACH TO STUDY

The first research project suggested to us that educational psychology might be profitably employed in understanding students’ perceptions of difficulty, not only because certain factors of difficulty were psychological in nature but also because common educational psychology research often covers some other, less overtly psychological, factors. The students’ approach to study is of interest for the light it throws on the sociological and ‘logistical’ factors which produced or induced the approach although its investigation is usually the work of the stricter educational psychologist without reference to the sociologist or resources planner. Fortunately, there has been a great deal of activity in this area of knowledge in Hong Kong and many of its findings are challenging, even controversial.

The students’ approach to study is a fundamental question and one which elucidates many students’ perceptions of language learning difficulty, even though it is not explicitly identified with any frequency as a factor of difficulty by teachers or students.

The question of approach to study incorporates attitude and motivation, two key concepts of the psychologist interested in language learning. Attitude and motivation are also prominent features - although often expressed implicitly - of student and teacher perceptions of learning difficulty.

LEARNING STYLES AND APPROACHES IN HONG KONG - A REVIEW AND

ANALYSIS OF SELECTED LITERATURE

Recent years have seen a considerable output of material regarding Asian and, more specifically, Hong Kong learning approaches. The presence of Professor John Biggs as head of the Dept. of Education at HKU may have inspired others to add to his own interesting output on the subject. In 1988, the Govern­ment’s Institute of Language in Education, organised an international conference on the subject of LANGUAGE  TEACHING  AND LEARNING  STYLES WITHIN AND ACROSS CULTURES. Much of the pro­ceedings of the conference appears collated in Bickley (1988).

Maley (1988), speaking at the Conference, believes that too much attention can be paid to cross-cultural factors in learning. The material problems of learning environments are more important: ‘Poverty is not culture-specific.’ Expectations about level of proficiency vary from one society to another.  Cultural stereotyping is a constant danger. Cultures are becoming rather than fixed. The apparent monolithic face of ‘culture’ hides the diversity of the individuals therein.

We are apt to agree and go one step, perhaps several steps, further.

For many reasons, we do not believe in ‘cultures’. Cultures do not exist although societies and individuals do.  Psychologically speaking (for the sake of convenience in Transactional Analysis parlance) cultures are part of the Parent of an individual. Interaction between people proceeds best by use of the Adult and the Child (although Parental ‘matching’ is stronger than is usually supposed).

‘Cultures’ are best regarded as misapprehensions, excuses, ballast and barriers, at least for the sake of more profitable argument, when we discuss culture in learning and in foreign language learning in particular.

In the review of literature which follows, the term ‘culture’ should not be interpreted as meaning anything we fundamentally agree with or recognise. The theory we thus propose - later - is that the stronger the hold of ‘culture’ as an idea or as a set of ideas denoted thereby, such as in ethnocentric societies or ethnocentric people, the more difficult is to learn foreign languages successfully. The British and, increasingly, the French and the Americans may be suggested as societies which tend towards validation of the theory.

In Hong Kong, the strong hold of ‘Chinese’ ‘culture’ is mitigated by many factors, not least the equally strong individual motivation of a great number of students.

Ethnocentrism is possibly an important problem in the Hong Kong foreign language learning context and should be considered closely, however uncomfortable (or merely convenient or obvious or imponderable) such consideration may be. Most studies, even one deliberately focusing on ethnocentrism in language learning published in Hong Kong (Bowtell 1987), skate round the idea of the possible ethnocentrism of Hong Kong learners. Perhaps it is considered impolite or offensive of Europeans to talk about ethnocentrism of Hong Kong students in Hong Kong. Perhaps such ‘confrontation’ is not permitted in this ‘culture’. Experience has shown that local people are not as sensitive to honest questions as overly ‘culture-conscious’ inquirers would suppose.

Two recent works  (Yang 1992 and Dikoetter 1992) present a picture of Chinese culture characterised by intractable racism and profound ethnocentricity (in fact, Yang believes that the problems of Chinese people are not individual but rather social and cultural problems (p.9).) Whether Chinese people in Hong Kong suffer from the same problems and whether these influence their ability to relate to other cultures  (and learn their languages) are of course matters for conjecture. In any case, studies in the area are thin on the ground.

K.K. Ho (1982) found that “attitudinal variables like authori­tarianism, ethnocentrism and attitude towards English speaking Westerners were more significant than motivational variables such as motivational intensity to learn English and desire to learn English”  (p.47) in influencing English proficiency amongst Hong Kong secondary school pupils.  This, according to Ho, partially verifies Fu’s (1975) hypothesis that “the fluency in English of many Hong Kong students is incommensurate with the amount of time and effort they put into that language in part  because their attitude toward the language is  ambivalent and  because  they may be uncertain about  aligning  themselves with the English speaking Westerners who govern Hong Kong”  (Fu  1975, p.185).

Ethnocentrism does not feature largely in the discussion of learning styles and approaches which follows. The focus of ‘scientific’ investigation has been towards the validation of tests devised in other cultures. The ethnocentrism of study approach tests is of course an important discussion point itself however. We refer to this point in the conclusion to this section.

APPROACHES TO STUDY IN HONG KONG - RECENT LITERATURE

A) LITERATURE UNRELATED TO THE BIGGS LINE

C.Y.C.Chan (1983), in a close study of Hong Kong secondary students’ understanding of an economics passage, found a great incongruity between intended and actual learning strategies.

She found 52 cases where intended and actual learning strategies were the same (against 228 cases where there was incongruence). Of the congruent cases, 11 intended to adopt deep active strategy, 19 intended surface active strategy and 42 subjects who intended surface passive strategy.  Of the incongruous cases, only 67 intended deep active learning strategies; 22 intended deep passive strategies and 139 intended surface active strategies.

From this study, the evidence is overwhelming that students are more likely to adopt passive and surface strategies and that there is a vast incongruity between intention and actuality in learning approach. Deep understanding is actively discouraged by the supply of vast amounts of notes, often unconnected, by Hong Kong secondary school teacher. “Usually the notes are made up of discrete points and information under big section headings. It is rather unusual to have any linkages between these points. This indirectly encourages rote memorization and discourages deep understanding.” (Chan 1983:117) Moreover, teachers did not employ teaching strategies which encouraged the desired approaches such as the active employment of pupils.

Students transcribed information rather than understood it. (cf. Morris 198...

Weckert (1988) identifies two types of constraints impinging on Asian students studying in Australia: cultural and contextual.  The pressure to succeed is enormous (not letting down the family) and financial worries are important. Plagiarism is prevalent for two reasons: initial misunderstanding of the course demands; lack of facility in English leads to verbatim copying.

Poon (1988) investigated the motivation and learning habits of business students. Students of English in Hong Kong are in a ‘tug-of-war’ between English and Mandarin, are highly motivated but have an instrumental rather than integrative learning orientation. English was seen as a means of ‘getting ahead in one’s occupation.’ There was very little correlation between the subjects’ integrative orientation and their achievement in English.  Although speaking and listening skills are highlighted as being important by students, very little is done to further such skills outside the classroom.

Willes (1988) compared students’ and university teachers’ perceptions of learning to study in English in Macau (where many of the students are Hong Kong Chinese). Teachers agreed with common assertions that their students were rote-oriented, fail to use time well, are not curious, fail to transfer learning, do not like discussions. Students thought classroom discussion wasted time, that planning was futile as one did not know what would happen next, that it is impossible to avoid cramming, that only residence in a foreign country could improve fluency. The passivity of Chinese students may not be ‘cultural’ but ‘a strategy for coping with the sheer difficulty of the task’. Cultural divergence is said to be ‘an easy attribution of our failure.’

B) USERS AND SYMPATHISERS OF THE BIGGS STUDY PROCESS

QUESTIONNAIRE

i)    Gow, Kember, Biggs, Chow and Balla (1988)

ii)   Kember, Gow, Chow, Slaw, Barnes and Hunt (1988)
iii)  Balla, Stokes, Stafford and Tang (1988)

iv)   Balla, Biggs and Gibson (1988)

iv)   Kember and Gow (1989)

v)    Stokes, Balla and Stafford (1989)

vi)   Biggs (1988)

vii)  Biggs (1989)

viii) Biggs (1990a)

ix)   Biggs (1990b)

x)    Biggs (1991)

These studies are devoted to tertiary students alone with the exception of Biggs (1988) and (1990b). It is however likely that findings from the investigation of tertiary students may reveal much, by extension, analogy and association, about the learning approach of secondary students. Another way of regarding the findings may, of course, be one of contrast.

Gow, Kember, Biggs, Chow and Balla (1988) is a report on a study of students in five tertiary institutions focussing on the self-management skills of students at Hong Kong Polytechnic then in progress. The tentative hypothesis for the study was that “the intellectual attitudes and characteristics of Hong Kong Polytechnic students are not consistent with self-management of learning.”  This lack of study skills is probably due to and is a reflection of the secondary education system in Hong Kong.

The study by Kember, Gow, Chow, Slaw, Barnes and Hunt (1988) presents preliminary data from the project mentioned above.  The approach to study was found to be similar to Australian students in similar institutes (although students from different departments were investigated). Conclusions were thus:

“1) Anecdotal evidence (of Hong Kong students’ surface approach to study) is not true for this sample.

2) Australian (and United Kingdom) tertiary students are also strongly orientated towards a surface approach.

3) It is possible that Hong Kong students have a greater propensity than Australian students to answer items in the way they think the researcher wants them to, or in the way which presents them in the best light. This difference may have affected the results.

4) There may be complex cultural differences between Chinese and Australian students which require further analysis. Factor analysis of the SPQ items, for the present study, did not reveal an identical factor structure to the original found by Biggs (as reported by O’Neil and Child, 1984).”(Bickley 1988:195)

 Balla, Stokes, Stafford and Tang (1988) find that the back­ground of students entering courses at the City Polytechnic in Hong  Kong  varied greatly and  that  cross-sectional  analysis suggested in the literature, including that suggested by Biggs, is inappropriate.

Only a longitudinal study of a single group of students over their period of stay at the institution can yield valid find­ings.

This tends to call into question a lot of the Biggs questionnaire findings.

Kember and Gow (1989) find that Biggs’ SPQ could be used in non-western settings for deep orientation scales but some cultural influence operates on the less desirable study approaches.

Stokes, Balla and Stafford (1989) used a slightly modified version of Biggs SPQ and find that  “apparent anomalies are explainable in the Hong Kong context without the need to question the validity of aspects of the SPQ”. Students enter educa­tion at the City Polytechnic, Hong Kong in order to get better jobs.  They do not however perceive themselves to be more pre­disposed to rote learning and surface approaches than other students elsewhere.

“Students enter the six degree courses with similar types of motivation and strategy, and after two years of instruction show a reduction in the desire to use achievement strategies as defined by Biggs and a weakening of the conviction that any topic of study can be more interesting once one gets into it.”

Biggs (1988) presents his own study of 20 and 29 Asian-born as opposed to 2060 and 2240 students Australian-born students (the first figure secondary, the second tertiary) to draw the conclusion that students whose first language was not English scored better on achieving and deep approaches. He also cites ‘evidence’ from, again, a study in which he played a part (Cantwell and Biggs 1988) to suggest that ESL students scored high on a deep approach to reading. Brushing aside examinations which essentially call the internal consistency of the SPQ and LPQ into question, the LPQ consistency scales are said to be high in the Hong Kong context except on the surface scale, Biggs then proceeds to compare an Australian and a Hong Kong sample (barring the possibility, of course, that some people regard Australia as part of Asia or at least significantly dissimilar to the UK or to continental Europe). No indication is given of the sample size. The ‘results’ suggest ‘a complete reversal of any stereotypes one might have had’ (p.431): higher scores for deep and lower scores for surface (HK boys) lower deep and higher achieving (HK girls) compared to the Australian sample. No explanation is offered for the small differences between the HK and Australian samples in achieving motive in form four but the significant difference in form six.  No explanation is offered for the sex difference or for the ‘progression’ of Hong Kong boys towards more desirable learning approaches compared with girls, who remain constant. We do accept the findings ‘with caution’. (p.435).

Biggs (1989) presents data from a study made in 20 Hong Kong schools in secondary form one, form four and form six. His findings may be summarised as follows:

·        On Surface motive there is little difference between forms four and six. Form one is less pragmatically oriented than higher forms. Form six students are the least rote oriented and girls less than boys. The girls’ surface approach increases from forms 1-6.

·        Boys are more intrinsically motivated than girls.

·        The Achieving motive increases steadily throughout secondary school in both sexes.

The results are said to be ‘encouraging’ (p.14). Students in Hong Kong, boys in particular, show a more academic approach to their work as they progress in school, contrary to Australian students. As the study is not longitudinal, it does not show that the school has the effect of changing the students’ study approach, however.

Biggs (1990a) suggests, whilst presenting results similar to his 1988 paper, that the ‘achieving motive is differently structured amongst the Chinese’ (p.23).  Biggs seriously challenges the common stereotypes of Asian students which may have the element of wish-fulfillment.

Biggs (1990b) finds that there is no evidence of a deleterious effect on students’ approaches to learning by them being taught in a second language and ‘overwhelming support’ that bilingualism is associated with deep and achieving approaches to learning.

Biggs (1991b) re-presents data from previous studies to conclude that ‘There is no support here for the stereotype of the rote learner’ (p.31) in Hong Kong secondary schools. Whilst admitting the suggestion of invalidity in the application of his methods in the Philippines, Biggs does not mention the challenge to the validity of SPQ from O’Neil and Child (1984), choosing instead to point to the ‘high Cronbach alphas’ (p.36) in Hong Kong and Australia.

C) A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE BIGGS LINE

Gilbert (1998) gives some good practical caveats to the employment of study approach instruments and to the whole question of learning styles in different cultures through five main points:

1) Learning styles are language and culture specific. Chinese people score highly over e.g. English students in auditory, kinesthetic and tactile preferences according to Reid (1987). Underlying all discussion of cognitive processes is a distinction between holistic/field-dependent (non-Western) and field-independent/analytical (Western) thinking reflected in e.g. differences in writing style and in approach to study.

2) Learning styles vary with subject and age.

3) Students can and do change their learning style.

4) Learning style assessment instruments are flawed (especially with regard to criteria, classification, exclusive categories, and interpretation of results).

5) There is no research to suggest that using students’ learning styles in teaching will increase student achievement.

O’Neil and Child (1984) offer an assessment of Biggs’ SPQ which only partially supports its internal consistency with the following reservations about ‘anomalous features’: the utilising dimension has only moderate internal consistency; some items do not have salient value in any of the six identifiable factors extracted in any solution; there was trouble with subscales. O’Neil and Child suggest more research to ‘explore the robustness of the utilising dimension’ (p.234) and to look at the actual performance of students to test the validity of their responses about preferred study strategies.

It should be noted that the consistency of Biggs’ SPQ was tested here on 277 British undergraduates (mean age 20.5 years) at an English Polytechnic not at a Hong Kong secondary school.

Hattie and Watkins (1981) investigated the internal structure of the SPQ with Australian and Filipino students and found that the Filipino sample had only a two factor solution interpretable and the scales had low to moderate internal inconsistencies thus leading them to the conclusion that the SPQ might be inappropriate for Filipino students.

Kember and Gow (1989) suggest that a ‘narrow approach’ may be the best description of many Hong Kong students’ approach to learning.  Such an approach is characterised by a sequence of ‘understand-memorise, understand-memorise’. This  ‘adjustment’ of the principles of ASI (but not Biggs’ SPQ) would indicate something more complicated than three distinctions would ac­count for.

Biggs (1989) finds high internal consistency for his LPQ except for surface motive. In the matter of construct validity, the different pattern of correlation with parental education (when compared to Australian data) is explained by possible differ­ences between Australian and Hong Kong cultures  ‘rather than that they call into question the local validity of the instru­ment.’ (p.14) Even in his own analysis, Biggs finds inconsist­encies in his instrument.

. Tang (Ph.D. diss. 1990 in progress, reported in Biggs 1991b:36) however finds data in interview of students that the deep and surface approaches are used in much the same way as they are in Sweden, the UK or Australia. Collaboration and a marked sensitivity to context also characterise the students’ approach.

Our conclusion is that the in many ways admirable work of Biggs and associates does not conclusively ‘challenge the stereo­ types’ about Hong Kong students. The value and consistency is called into question because a) it has little support in other Asian contexts; b) it has evinced a large degree of inconsist­ency when used by investigators in Hong Kong; c) no longitudi­nal study has been conducted in Hong Kong; d) the judgment of many investigators, including Biggs himself, point to a differ­ent conception of deep and achieving approach in the minds of Hong Kong students; e) the SPQ is a pseudo-etic invention of a Western or semi-Western school environment  projected  into  a colonial,  Asian and ‘developing’ context; f)  Biggs’  findings are not supported even partially by independent studies g) what we know about the Hong Kong education system and the sociologi­cal situation of Hong Kong students (q.v.) makes deep approach­es  to learning  at secondary level supremely unlikely  if  not impossible.

In any case, of course, teachers should do away with stereotypes to be effective teachers. More importantly, new stereotypes of ‘they are just like students in Australia’ or ‘they are better’ or ‘they may be subtly different’ do nothing to help change the situational factors of the Hong Kong educational malaise. They merely describe the effects of attempts students make to compensate for it.

CONCLUSION

This thesis mentioned in the beginning the importance we attach to inter-disciplinary and holistic approaches to language learning difficulty. The problem with all strictly ‘scientific’ approaches to learning difficulty is that they often ignore some important aspect (e.g. the sociological dimension). Biggs’ SPQ is no exception. The intention to prove its validity in a Western context has made no significant contribution towards an understanding of English language learning difficulty because SPQ, as a measuring instrument with pretensions to objectivity, deliberately ignores large bodies of important data. It is also a static model of understanding, like much of the traditional research into ‘attitude’ and ‘motivation’.

The ‘different perception’ of deep and achieving approach by Hong Kong secondary students mentioned above is probably no such thing. In Hong Kong, and in other Chinese credentialist societies such as Singapore and Taiwan, there may be no important distinction to be made between deep and achieving approaches to study.

The distinction may be the invention of Western educationalists and Western criteria of ‘the proper approach to study’.  The proper approach to study in Hong Kong can frequently be demon­strated to be the achieving approach. The achieving approach has also served Hong Kong students remarkably well. It is our contention that a truly ‘deep’ approach would serve them better.  Such an approach would be marked by a sense of intrinsic value, of relevance and of positive engagement in the learning situation.  Even if such an approach is not more productive in terms of marks and grades, it may, in the end, be more effi­cient.  It would certainly remove some of the common difficul­ties of Hong Kong English learning: boredom, a sense of frus­tration and irrelevance in both teacher and student.

Having investigated many of the aspects of difficulty identified in the first research project, we were interested to find out what attempts are made by teachers to overcome such difficulties on a day-to-day basis in ordinary classroom practice.

Despite the mass of difficulties which had been identified, then investigated, we were optimistic in the power of teachers to overcome difficulty and to radically re-orientate students towards more helpful ways of learning English.

Following our declared interest in classroom dynamics and in reciprocity, we were interested to see in what way teachers and students influence each other. Close classroom observation was called for. Before we could use the time in the classroom wisely, however, some thought had to be given to the model of observation we would use. The next section begins with a description of how our model of observation developed and proceeds to close analysis of what we take to be some typical Hong Kong English language lessons.