THE CONCEPT OF DIFFICULTY

Difficulty is a relative concept with objective and subjective validity.  It is opposed to ease or facility and describes a task which implies effort or labour.  It is also a comparative concept in that some starting point and a goal are indicated and unstated comparisons implied (whether they exist or not).

Some examples may make the range of meaning of ‘difficult’ and ‘difficulty’ clear.

Real tennis is more difficult than lawn tennis.

He is a difficult person.

He’s just being difficult.

It is difficult to please everybody.

It isn’t a difficult language at all.

It was a difficult book to read.

The last example finds an echo in the OED (2b) ‘Something hard to understand; a perplexing or obscure point or question.’  The question though is ‘Does this mean an absolute property of difficulty or does it remain a relative concept?’  Clearly, there is nothing which can be considered absolutely difficult, if it is also possible, although many things may be considered impossible. An obscure reference in Shakespeare may baffle an undergraduate but not an expert scholar.  Steiner (1978) sug­gests that no coherent answer can be given to the question  ‘What is difficulty?’ (in the case of difficulty  in  literary  works)  “outside a complete model, such as we do not  have,  of  the  relations between ‘thought’ and speech, and outside  of  a  total epistemology, which again we do not have, of the congru­ence or non-congruence of speech-forms with a ‘precedent’  body  of intention, perception and vocative impulse.”

Higa (1966) warns of the danger of ‘circular argumentation’ in assuming the existence of abstract concepts such as difficulty  (e.g. ‘ the learner takes much time to learn certain material because it is difficult’).  Difficulty is best described, according to Higa, operationally, in terms of the amount of time or number of trials needed to learn something.  Absolute difficulty does not exist and it is ‘the learner’s past and present learning experience which makes any learning material easy or difficult’. 

From a linguistic point of view, difficulty may be analysed firstly in terms of the ‘gap’ of effort or time delay between competence and performance; secondly in terms of the ‘gap’ between defective competence and desired performance and thirdly any temporary lapse or breakdown in competence and performance due to extraneous factors. Difficulty of formulation may be experienced by native speakers.  This difficulty is likely to be similar to the foreign language learner’s in many points.

We will touch on the difficulties of English for native speak­ers later in this thesis.

From an information processing, or cognitive, point of view, difficulty is the time delay, efficiency being constant, in the system from stimulus (input) to response (output) caused by the insufficiency of the system.  This is similar to the behavioural definition, the difference being how the difficulty is observed, either from within (connections, measured data and perceptions) or without (patterns, effects and observable problems).

From a problem solving viewpoint, difficulty may be measured in many ways (Newell and Simon 1972): ‘whether a solution is attained or not; the time required to find a solution; the quality of the solution; and so on. All of these measures are related, though imperfectly.  None is applicable uniformly, nor free from all conceptual difficulties.’

Further fundamental questions are ‘Who decides what is difficult?’ and ‘Can we measure difficulty?’  Differential psychology (psychometrics), a branch of cognitive psychology, may come to our aid as may the science of human problem solving. The subjective ‘Student Perception of Difficulty’ may acquire objectively measurable proportions.  Is there any real point in making a difference? As noted in the Introduction, difficulty and effort would appear to be interrelated, both subjectively and objectively.  When asked to define difficulty, a student or a teacher may quantify the difficulty in terms of the effort needed to complete a task.

As pointed out previously, error analysis cannot account for the effort of successful language use.  Effort may be required by perfectly fluent speakers of a foreign language to produce error-free sentences.  Indeed, more effort may be required by a capable and sensitive speaker of a foreign language than a weak and insensitive one.   There appear then to be a number of factors affecting difficulty and therefore effort which may be listed as:

innate foreign language learning ability (aptitude)

motivation                 atmosphere

sensitivity to errors      mood

awareness of rules         social and interpersonal factors

                           (e.g. group cohesion, social distance)

teaching technique        

cognitive style            utility

personality                intelligence    

behavioural strategies    

This fairly formidable list of variables affecting difficulty and thus effort are partly investigated by McDonough (1986).  There is no attempt by him to investigate difficulty as such and this reluctance is shared by the major works on the subject of psychology and second language acquisition (Leontiev (1981),Krashen  (1981), Pimsleur (1971), van Els (1984)).  The latter

gets somewhat closer than the others in introducing performance analysis and discourse analysis to language learning  analysis. These models approach the dynamics of language learning more closely.   In the discussion of aptitude, however, there is reference in the work of Pimsleur and others to devise a lan­guage learning aptitude test but no investigation of difficul­ty.  Why do the works on ‘Psychology in Second Language Learn­ing’ not include difficulty?  We believe that difficulty is an essential concept in language learning.  By discovering the sources of difficulty we may be able to remove them and make the learning of foreign languages, a notably difficult task for many, more efficient. Investigations made hitherto may have skirted round the subject for a number of reasons:

1)   The difficulty of acquiring scientifically reliable data.

2)   The difficulty of interpretation of such data.

3)   A reluctance to combine disciplines.

4)   The enormity of the task.

5)   The specialisation inherent in the development of the social sciences.

THE SCIENTIFIC MEASUREMENT OF DIFFICULTY

Before examining the question of subjective evaluation of difficulty, we will address the first point above. Scientific data may be obtained through psychometric tests using differential psychology or more directly through psychophysiological measurement. Psychometrics is that branch of psychology, controversial in some areas, which examines intelligence, performance and aptitude.  A fundamental problem arises of ascertaining the absolute threshold of differentiation and the difference threshold in tests.  For example, if a subject can just distinguish the weight of an object of 100 grams from one of 102 grams then the difference threshold is two grams (Atkinson 1987).  The absolute threshold is that minimum magnitude of a stimulus which can be distinguished from no stimulus at all.  In the examination of difficulty, the beginning point of difficulty may be said to be that point of effort necessary for a native speaker.  Any effort recorded above this absolute threshold is ‘difficulty’.  The difference threshold may be fixed by a marked and measurable difference on the scales of psychophysiological measurement employed.

There are of course two main assumptions here - that stress and brain activity increase with the onset of difficulty and that such activity can be measured.  There is also the assumption, in the setting of the difference threshold, that psychophysiological factors increase proportionally, or at least directly, with the amount of difficulty experienced.

Biesheuvel (1969) suggests a number of conditions for optimum psychophysiological measurement:

ethnic and cultural homogeneity

ease, interest and motivation in the test

clear instructions

reliability

discrimination amongst individuals

validity of test

culture-fairness (as culture-free tests cannot be made)

This list would appear to support the idea of the difficulty of investigating difficulty. It should, however, be possible to devise such a test and to measure psychophysiological changes by means of electroencephalography, skin resistance measurement  (psychogalvanic reflex), cardio-vascular and respiratory responses (finger plethysmogram), and cardiotachometry  (including sinus and respiratory arrythmia), as directed by Biesheuvel.

Guilford (1954) suggests that in the interpretation of data (point two above) in a ‘felt difficulty’ test, variables such as ability level, motivation, degree of effort and level of speed and accuracy must be borne in mind.  These can be compared to some extent with McDonough’s list above.

Anderson (1975) investigates effort through the dilation of the pupil and through frequency of eye movements and blinks.  ‘Turning inward to think’, it is found, leads to an increase in eye movement and listening closely inhibits eye movements.  Moreover, Anderson suggests there are two states of effort:  ‘passive acceptance’ when pupil dilation is accompanied by a decrease in heart rate and ‘active manipulation’, where pupil dilation is accompanied by an increase in heart rate.  Effort and difficulty are intimately related, it is claimed, as one study finds that incentive has only a marginal effect  (Kahneman, Peavler and Onuska 1968).  The best method of judging effort, and thus difficulty, would then be ‘the rate at which mental activity is performed’ which can be measured in TOTEs (Test-Operate-Test-Exit) per unit of time.

Another way of understanding difficulty is the amount of time needed to successfully convey ideas to an interlocutor. The model of communication we might employ is Saussure’s _circuit de “la parole“ (Saussure ed. de Muro 1981:28).

Cronbach (1984) looks at difficulty in terms of anxiety, which ‘expresses motivation to avoid psychological failure’.  Perceived difficulty acts as an intensifier and a person with strong motivation is attracted to activities where success appears highly uncertain and makes great efforts in such tasks. Defensive students will prefer easy tasks.  Prediction is difficult, once again, because of a series of variables similar to those of McDonough (affiliation, prestige, sexual roles, peer pressure).

Of the methods for ‘measuring’ difficulty, we have chosen to look mainly at perception of difficulty as we believe this is what is readily communicated between teacher and student, student and student in the guise of the anxiety defined by Cronbach above. We would suggest that ‘absolute’ difficulty may remain constant, ‘personal difficulty’ be so varied an amalgam of McDonough’s elements that a systematic and universal removal of these difficulties may be impossible, often for political, cultural or economic reasons (size of classroom, level of training of teacher, varying status of target language).  The measurement of such difficulty is likely to be purely academic.   A symbiotic relationship of attitudes in teacher and student is, for example, a large difficulty which may be removed by decisive action on the part of teacher and administrator. As will become clear later, difficulty in the learning of English in Hong Kong is a complex problem with a great number of contributing factors. Many of these factors are practically unquantifiable, even illusory. Moreover, the problem of difficulty frequently lies in the complicated relationships between the varying factors rather than their individual strengths. This complicated relationship is also likely to vary from one individual to another. As the aim of this study is to unravel the mystery of this difficulty and propose solutions to it, mere physical measurement of difficulty in performance is likely to prove a sterile and unproductive exercise.

THE INTERPRETATION OF DATA

As we have chosen to emphasise perceptions of difficulty and to obtain our data from a variety of extraneous sources, rather than to pursue an ‘objective’ and ‘empirical’ notion of the same, the data collected do not lend themselves to rigorous and clear interpretation. The research question - What is difficulty in English language learning? - is sufficiently vague to terrify most strict scientists. As the data collection and analysis is initially aimed at gaining a clear picture of a complex idea rather than testing an hypothesis, some speculation and imagination is required. Moreover, any strict definition of ‘difficulty’ already falls into the trap of pseudo-scholasticism and narrow exploration which we wish to avoid. In forming a picture of what constitutes difficulty, the data are taken from a variety of sources: observation, experience, student and teacher perceptions, sociological reality, cultural assumption, linguistic analysis. As these data are derived from a number of bases - differing in theoretical foundations as well as research method - any rigorous analytical method is unwarranted and misleading. Nevertheless, some foundations for our analysis are presented in our general educational theory and position, our approach to English language learning and teaching and our open ethnologi­cal stance.

THE COMBINATION OF DISCIPLINES AND SPECIALISATION

The pursuit of a picture of difficulty in second or foreign language learning naturally involves the employment of a number of scholarly disciplines - in the main psychology, sociology didactics and linguistics. As indicated in the Introduction, approaches based in any of the disciplines are nearly always most fruitful when they cast an eye towards one of the other disciplines. In Hong Kong, despite the presence of a serious problem in the learning of English language in secondary schools and elsewhere,  (which has brought about something called a Hong Kong Language Campaign sponsored by big business­es), there has been as yet no serious attempt at cooperation between the various disciplines to understand the true nature of the problem.  It is difficult to understand the various disciplines’ reluctance, given the presence of a problem which naturally involves all of them,  at least at university level.  The expansion of the social sciences has almost certainly brought about something like a blinkered approach to the prob­lem.  In Hong Kong University, for example, my experience has been that inter-disciplinary work is not encouraged and the Department of Education was the most inflexible.

THE ENORMITY OF THE TASK

General questions produce a lot of data and may easily succumb to banal speculation and lack of direction.  This was a danger cheerfully grasped in this study. Sometimes, for example, in the course of the present study which extended over three years’ full time, a Letter to the Editor in the local newspaper presented more fruitful information than a detailed project or a scholarly article. The wealth of data was a great problem because so much appeared relevant: opinions, intuitions, perceptions, facts and figures, types of error, analyses of interference, sociological studies. It would have been much easier to adopt a ‘number-crunching’ approach. It would certainly have had the approbation of my one-time supervisor in the Dept. of Education at HKU. Discipline was however imposed in the two research projects. The general philosophical and speculative nature of the study was not, we felt, hampered by support from such empirical data. The research projects both supported the speculation and stimulated the working out of theory. In the end, in our recommendations for intervention, we arrived at a synthesis of speculation, theory and research findings.

Some mention must be made here of the role and scope of second language research in this thesis. Our intention was not to conduct a study based on models apparent in the TEFL/TESL literature.  This would defeat, we believed, the intention of the thesis to present an original and multi-faceted view of the situation.  Nevertheless, use was made of studies which seemed to veer away from the usual trend in TEFL/TESL research of enumeration and statistics. In the main however, much of what is hallowed in TEFL/TESL circles was deliberately ignored in order to gain original insight.

LEARNING DIFFICULTY AND LEARNING DISABILITY

Amongst the general variable which must be borne in mind in an examination of particular intellectual difficulties are the general learning difficulties which apply in all subjects the student may study.  These then become part of teaching difficulty (together with discipline problems, teaching strategies etc. which may then influence student motivation and hence become contributing factors to learning difficulty and so on.)

Much attention is paid by pedagogics to ‘learning disabilities’  (special schools, the gifted child, the stutterer, the autistic learner, teaching the physically handicapped) yet little gener­al advice is given to teachers in the literature to less seri­ous learning difficulties.  Wilson (1971) lists ten problem areas some of which the ‘ordinary’ or ‘average’ student may experience to varying degrees through his school career:

visual problems

speech problems                      (two chapters)

auditory problems

neurological dysfunctions

reading and language difficulties    (two chapters)

the culturally disadvantaged child

the emotionally disturbed child

the educationally handicapped child

the socially maladjusted child

the ‘mentally retarded’ child

As expected, these difficulties differ greatly from McDonough’s specific language learning influencing factors but find some echo in his factors of mood, personality and behavioural strategies.

It is significant that two chapters each are allotted to speech problems and reading difficulties.  The inference we can draw from this, which is supported in Chapter 3 (‘5% of the secondary school population’) is that general language problems in the first language are common and numerous.  In the category of speech problems, they include stuttering, ‘tongue- thrust’ (lisping), defective sounds, disorders of voice, articulation disorders, disorders of rate, organic disorders  (palsy, cleft palate).  Reading problems, not defined in Wilson’s work, may include slow reading, poor comprehension, sub-vocalisation, dyslexia and poor scanning/skimming skills.

LEARNING DIFFICULTIES OF CHINESE PEOPLE IN

HONG KONG

“You Chinese boy had only one fault.  You were all so hard-working but you never had any imagination.  You never ask the reason for doing anything, like we Portuguese boy did.   You just did it because it was always done that way.  You know, I bet all your teacher would be so please if you ask why some­time.”

(From Timothy Mo, The Monkey King, pp. 92-3)

“Long, dead hours of routine instruction from a jaded syllabus to dutiful children, who would obediently learn their lessons, get into the university and repeat the process all over again.   Only _her pupils might find themselves greeting the soldiers of the P.L.A., if not in the next five years, at least in the next twenty.  They would hardly have been prepared for the change, but they would endure it as they had endured everything that was imposed by authority.”

(From Anthony New, The Chinese Box, p.96)

“description is the mode the learner feels most at home in, not  analytical exposition or argumentation.”  Fernando (1987) writing about Sri Lankan students.

One of the most interesting experiments of direct experience which an investigator of Chinese pedagogy can make, is to learn Chinese through an untrained Chinese teacher.  Following the hypothesis that an untrained teacher will simply reproduce his own learning strategies, experience of being taught and his teacher’s style, the investigator will have the opportunity to observe the way in which his teacher has learned and been taught and may draw some conclusions from it.  The present writer had the opportunity to learn Mandarin in Zurich from an expatriate Chinese engineer, Mr Yang Qiwei, from Shanghai.  My conclusions from the six months’ instruction were:

·        My instructor assumed a high level of memorization skills.

·        He expected his students to spend a large amount of time on practising Chinese characters.

·        He did not take kindly to questioning, deviations from his lesson plan, practising orally without an open book.

·        His input seemed to consist largely of copious preparation and following the textbook.

·        He did not relate well to the learning styles of his students.

I experienced severe learning difficulties with Mr Yang and I am certain he experienced difficulty in teaching me. Given a Chinese instead of a difficult Western pupil, the result of the instruction would probably have been quite different. In this case, the learning disability was largely due to cross-cultural misunderstanding. Westerners probably cannot learn so well by rote and memorization as Chinese students can. Rote and memorization probably do not constitute difficulty for Chinese students. But are they efficient means of learning languages and, if not, does their overuse and emphasis constitute a real learning difficulty if not a learning disability (particularly if rote and memorization are seen as the only real ways to learn anything)?

The special learning difficulties of Chinese students in Hong Kong are becoming less difficult to assess as research is carried out in the subject. Apart from the specific problems of the environment and the teaching methods employed, which will be discussed at a later stage, Chinese students may exhibit some of the characteristics of the Chinese people in general as assessed in a number of studies.

Rumjahn Hoosain and In-Mao Liu, writing in Bond (1986) summarise the existing research to provide the best available overview of thinking on Chinese perception and cognition.

Both writers assume general truths about the Chinese people: they are more tradition oriented, authoritarian in thinking and pay more attention to the concepts of officiality, loyalty and

filiality.  These cultural attitudes influence cognition and perception as behavioural rules.  Behavioural rules exercise a strong influence over Chinese people and thus also over their perception and cognition, assuming the simultaneous processing model.   This model implies that “if a behavioural rule is incompatible with a momentary stimulus, a person’s response will tend to be suppressed.  On the other hand, if a behaviour­al rule is compatible with a momentary stimulus condition, a person’s response will be facilitated”.

The simultaneous processing model links social attitudes to behaviour in a convincing manner and we are inclined to agree with it as a basis for understanding so-called ‘perceptual differences’ between Chinese and other cultures.  There seems to be very little basis for cognitive or perceptual differences on purely ethnic/genetic grounds.

The advantage of the simultaneous processing model is that it may incorporate the behavioural rules covered under ‘social psychology’ into a discussion of learning or other cognitive difficulty.  Thus, for example, face behaviour, if proved to a  ‘strong’ behavioural rule, may influence perception, then cognition and finally the process of learning and teaching.

The Whorfian hypothesis (that language determines or predisposes people towards certain thought and behaviour patterns) is apparently dispelled by Furth (1964), who tried to demonstrate that language does not affect intellectual development in any direct, general or decisive view. We follow this view and believe from our own experience, that the influence of language may be indirect or specific.

There is, of course, an assumption in the thinking above that certain characteristics of Chinese cognition hinder effective learning.  This may be incorrect.  We should perhaps speak of a specifically Chinese learning style and Chinese learning strategies which may, or may not, facilitate learning.

The question of the homogeneity of Chinese people is also assumed in the conclusions reached by Hoosain and Liu although there are probably marked differences between the behavioural rules, or rather their rigidity and emphasis, of Taiwanese, PRC citizens or ‘Hong Kong Chinese’ (as defined by Lau, S.K.  (1988).

Nevertheless, our own experience teaching in the PRC and in Hong Kong convinces us that there is indeed a certain Chinese teaching and learning style which is probably, in some respects, detrimental to the acquisition of knowledge, and which hinders the acquisition of English as a living, communi­cative language. The PRC, in its drive for modernisation and Hong Kong, in its continued education debate, share an aware­ness of backwardness in teaching and learning styles (Tang 1983).  This will be discussed in closer detail later in this thesis.

As a further point of general reference, use may be made of Triandis’ (1972) division of etic, emic and pseudoetic research; etic research compares different cultures with universal categories, emic research, on the other hand, uses culture-specific categories.  Pseudoetic research projects emic categories of one culture onto another culture and holds them to be universals.

Our research attempts to be genuinely emic in that we are more interested in the disparities within the learning and teaching procession Hong Kong than trying to ‘prove’ a point from a  ‘Western’ standpoint.  We aim at improving the general effi­ciency of the teaching and learning process.   To this end, comparison of the perception of difficulty may give a useful indication of imbalance in the classroom dynamic or, perhaps, of  an inefficient similarity of attitude.  We will not decide what is ‘difficult’ or what is a ‘serious error’.  The errors we have chosen for grading, for example, come from within the schools themselves. Nevertheless, the ideal of genuinely emic research was compromised to a certain extent by our own ques­tion formulation, based on our experience and intuition.

With the above considerations in mind, we will examine the conclusions reached by Hoosain and Liu and speculate on their effect on learning and teaching efficiency.

Chinese socialization patterns are held to conform to the strict authoritarian model and a rigidity of such an attitude can be demonstrated to correlate inversely with cognitive complexity.

As a teacher represents an authority figure, it may be that over-adaptation to the detriment of exploration and challenge and thus personal growth takes place in the classroom.   This interpretation, and its claimed basis in Confucianism, is by now a stereotype of Chinese students’ behaviour, especially when studying abroad. Biggs (1990) dismisses such a stereotype as a red herring, fanciful and ‘possibly a colonial version of that paternalistic family of defence mechanisms which includes wish-fulfillment.’  In the same article he recounts a familiar experience of ‘Western’ teachers teaching Chinese students in waiting for questions only to be frustrated.   Why were the students unable to respond?  An investigation into what I call  ‘ritualisation’ or into ‘group solidarity’, which are particu­larly marked in Chinese classrooms, may yield convincing an­swers.

The social orientation of Chinese students is taken to be familial in which strangers are not considered to be  ‘significant others’ and therefore difficult to approach.  This may have effects in the ability of Chinese students to cooperate in large groups.  Biggs (1990) supports this view and relates that tutorials of twelve to 14 are often ‘stilted’ but that small groups work very well.  As class size in China and Hong Kong is rarely under thirty in secondary schools, this has important consequences for the teaching strategies.  In addition, Chinese students have a tendency to form groups naturally to study (Biggs 1990). This may be good for projects but not advisable if the aim is to acquire an individual viewpoint.

The cognitive style of the Chinese is said by Liu to be relational-contextual as opposed to inferential-categorical.

Functional and thematic relationships are formed from stimuli rather than classifications made from inferences.  The deduction may be that more concrete and relational teaching strategies are to be employed rather than abstract and speculative teaching approaches.  This is supported by Liu’s assertion of two Chinese behavioural rules:

1) “If the purpose is to acquire the knowledge contained in an article, then the best strategy is to memorise the article” (supported by a 1984 Taiwanese study).

2) “If the purpose is to acquire any new cognitive skill, then the best strategy is to practice repeatedly.”

The willingness of Chinese students to practise skills and to memorize is readily supported by the experience of the author.

A recent study at the Hong Kong Polytechnic (Kember and Gow 1989) suggests that the characteristic sequence of learning for the students was ‘understand-memorize’ on clearly-defined tasks.  This is explained by the need to reduce memory processing time and partly to a transfer of Confucian filial attachment to the lecturer. 

It is interesting to note that studies cited by Liu indicate that Taiwanese mothers were more likely to cite effort as a factor in academic success whilst American mothers cited talent or innate ability.  This might indicate an achievement presage based on the principle that ‘with the required amount of work (often superhuman) everything can be achieved’.  In the present author’s experience, at least half of his 70 Baptist College students were doing courses which they had not expressed a strong preference to take.  ‘Aptitude’ for the courses was scarcely mentioned by students or teachers, rather there seemed to be an hierarchy of course merit from medicine and law downwards (which has parallels in the European context).  The hierarchical thinking in education will be examined later in this thesis but mention may be made here of a hierarchy of institutions in the tertiary sphere and a covert list of ‘good schools’ in the secondary sphere.  It will be suggested that hierarchical thinking is emphasised and accepted amongst Chinese people in general (Bond 1986) and, being a strong behavioural rule, is carried over into education.

Chinese people score lower on tests of formal operation  (ability to use abstract rules) on Piagetian scales and attain these skills later than reported by Piaget (1964) for concepts such as quantity, levels, seriation, symbols, weight, sequence, inclusion, matrix, movement, probability, volume, angles, shadows, perspective, rotation, distance, classes etc..

Child development is examined by David Ho in Bond (1986) and reveals the consequences of the ‘authoritarian’ model of upbringing already mentioned.  This upbringing style probably hinders cognitive development, thus accounting for the later attainment of Piagetian skills (performance latency).  The apparent ‘immaturity’ of Chinese students in the eyes of foreign teachers may be thus explained.

Chinese people excel in reasoning, number facility and space conceptualisation but have low scores in verbal ability, idea fluency, originality and flexibility.  Such generalisation, although the result of repeated tests, must be treated with caution. 

Processing written material takes the same amount of time for English native speaker readers as for Chinese native speaker readers.  Writing however is three times slower for the Chinese.

This may have effects when Chinese students come to write English.  Reading Chinese requires foveal vision (with no blurred edges) and more eye fixations per line.  In all cultures there is a comparable incidence of actual reading disability.  In reading English, however, the parafoveal skill required for reading English speedily may cause Chinese students some difficulty. 

Chan (1983) found that reading comprehension (‘deep understanding’) was poor in Chinese students reading English because of poor textbooks, copious teacher spoon-feeding notes and thus an encouragement of rote learning.  Rather than innate or culturally-specific reading difficulty, the difficulty is induced by bad teaching: “The teachers did not employ teaching strategies which encouraged the desired learning approaches.” Cantwell and Biggs (1988) found that ESL students were more abstract readers than first language students, producing essays based on the reading which were ‘focused high’, said to be a good strategy in expository writing.

Biggs (1990) tries to dispel the stereotype, as he sees it, of the Chinese ‘surface learning’ student.  His terminology may be explained thus: students have one of three styles or approaches, ‘surface’ (‘based on extrinsic motivation’, doing the minimum with a large amount of rote learning), ‘deep’  (‘based on interest in the subject matter of the task’, the student seeks personal involvement and forms theories and  hypotheses of her own) and ‘achieving’ (‘based on the ego- enhancement that comes out of visibly achieving’, the student  organises time well, is neat and systematic).

Using two questionnaires of his own devising (Biggs 1987 b and c), the Hong Kong professor of education suggests, by means of three studies, that Hong Kong students not only compare well to Australian and expatriate HK students but show a significantly lower surface approach and a higher incidence of deep strategy.  He does not explain away the poor teaching context in Hong Kong, but suggests that ‘Chinese Asians have a motivational infrastructure that mediates contextual effects, such that they adopt learning strategies that are unexpected given that context: high deep and low surface.’

This is a large claim to make and deserves some critical probing.  If it is correct, then much of the grumblings of educators, local and expatriate alike, in Hong Kong are based on prejudice, professional frustration and other factors.  Hong Kong students are, according to Biggs, good students, learning with a deep strategy.  English learning would, presumably, not be excepted from this learning approach.  The difficulties of the students emanating from approaches to study would be similar to good students of English everywhere and as approaches to study seem to ‘mediate contextual effects’ for Chinese students, such difficulties are likely to be minor and incidental in the long run. It may then be useful to look at how the difficulties arose, how they were combatted and, even­tually, overcome.

COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGIES OF HONG KONG STUDENTS - SOME SPECULATIONS

Platt (writing in Garcia and Otheguy 1989) identifies six sensitivity areas and possible problems in balancing personal relationships from a linguistic point of view.  The former are: engaging (starting a verbal exchange), disengaging (ending a verbal exchange), requesting, acceding, positive responding and negative responding (to an offer or invitation).

These six ordinary occasions for verbal communication are fraught with difficulty for a) native speakers of English communicating with Cantonese speakers and b) for Cantonese speakers using English to communicate with English N/S (native speakers).

This is due to the differing communicative strategies likely to be employed, and expected, by each party.

This is one of the major sources of _difficulty facing learners of English as a second or foreign language in Hong Kong.

For various reasons, the ‘communicative approach’ to language learning is not fully or widely practiced in Hong Kong.   Learners of English thus have a meagre store of L2 communicative strategies and often fall back on native language strategies e.g. greeting with the inquiry ‘Have you eaten yet?’ in direct imitation of the Cantonese: ‘Sic jaw fahn mei ah?’ which has the status of a greeting rather than a relatively unexpected personal question as it does to a native English speaker.

We can thus speak not only of linguistic interference but of communicative interference. 

This situation is complicated additionally by the fact that a Hong Kong speaker of English may have a number of systems of communicative rules: if he is a proficient speaker, educated abroad, he may have something approaching a Native Speaker system; in addition, he may have what Platt (1989) describes as EF, ES and NE rules depending on whether he uses the rules of an English as a Foreign Language user, as a Second Language user or as a New English user.

In the six situations mentioned above we can speculate on the difficulties encountered by Cantonese speakers using English in Hong Kong in communication with mother tongue English speakers  (although the difference in communicative strategies probably applies to a large extent to other Europeans and even other foreigners e.g. Filipinos).

1)       Engaging

The example we give above is the commonest case of communicative interference but, as we have said, it is also a case of linguistic interference. Hong Kong students may ask quite inappropriate direct questions: ‘Where are you going?’ or be quite formal (especially when meeting someone with authority such as a teacher).  They may wait for the person in authority to speak first.  For various reasons, engaging in English in public may be thought not in keeping with the communicative role of English!

2)       Disengaging

It is a common experience of foreigners in Hong Kong to have no disengaging procedure when a transaction is completed in a shop (or even on the telephone).  No ‘Thank You. Goodbye’ and no

‘Call Again’.  Platt (1989) found that his Singaporean Chinese subjects considered such disengaging formula superfluous.  On the other hand, a common disengaging procedure from the Cantonese speaking English (‘I’ll call you back’) is thought to be definite and explicit by NS users.

3)       Requesting

It is common for Hong Kong people to talk around the subject rather than to frame a definite wish.  On the other hand, particularly in business dealings, the Cantonese may be very brusque and exact (‘Sign here’, ‘Come this way’) whilst Europeans may be more circumlocutory

4)       Acceding

In common with Platt’s example from Singapore, Cantonese speakers may not accede at all in English but simply carry out a task assigned to them silently.  Statements such as ‘I will do my best’ or ‘I will try’ may be a polite negation or a sign of acceding to a request.

5)       Accepting an offer

Cantonese people do not always express corresponding enthusiasm when accepting an invitation. 

6)       Negative responses

This is remarkably difficult for Cantonese speakers. Strategies for avoiding saying ‘No’ include changing the subject, saying ‘Yes’ and then later inventing an excuse, thanking the person (but not agreeing to do anything).  On the other hand, direct refusals on the part of Europeans are felt to be brusque and unfeeling.

Smith (1987) terms ‘erroneous’ the hypotheses that a speaker will use mother tongue discourse strategies when using a second or foreign language (they do not carry over entirely); and there is only one correct set of strategies for discourse in English (English is multi-cultural).  A ‘negotiation of meaning’ is called for in cross-cultural discourse.  We must take into account five ‘senses’: a sense of self, a sense of the other, a sense of the relationship between self and other, a sense of social setting and a sense of the goal or objective.  These senses are likely to interfere with successful language acquisition and discourse.  They are a form of difficulty.

In Hong Kong, because it is principally a monocultural society, the force of mother tongue discourse strategies is strong.  The extent to which they are carried over into the use of English is also thought to be wide and persistent.  The presence of a British colonial government (with consequent modelling of the education system) has made British English a pervasive set of strategies to be imitated.

It can therefore be speculated that:

·        Cantonese discourse strategies exert a strong influence on the use of English.

·        The English discourse strategies adopted are likely to be those from British English.

Communication strategies are greatly influenced by scripts“ (in the non-TA sense, meaning the extralinguistic knowledge that is brought to a specific situation or event).  It is the ‘implicit cultural knowledge’ which is used in the situation.

This may include, according to Saville-Troike and Kleifgen  (writing in Garcia and Otheguy 1989), ‘school scripts’ such as roles and responsibilities (assumptions regarding age, sex, allowances for parental, spouse involvement); rules/expectations for behaviour (appropriate noise level, movement and participation of students).

Scripts, in this sense, are based on individual experience and the sociological norms of the society.  Thus, communication strategies are heavily influenced, for example, by considerations of modesty and even the necessity of chaperoning when NS and EFL user engage in conversation in Hong Kong.  What constitutes a good environment for discussion (in earshot of one’s colleagues, in a noisy restaurant or in front of one’s spouse) is entirely different for Cantonese and Europeans in many cases.

CONCLUSION

This section sought to establish some of the parameters of our discussion. We looked at the great preliminary questions underlying this study: the concept of difficulty, its measurement in general terms; the combination of disciplines inherent in our approach and some of the general ideas of what is perceived as the specifically Chinese way of cognition and communication in general. With these general questions intro­duced, if not definitively answered, it is now appropriate to turn our attention to some more preliminaries:  the general properties of English and the perceived difficulties in it for first and second speakers. In section 3, we can thus turn to the specific situation of English in Hong Kong and in section 4, the specific approach we have developed to look at English language learning and to difficulty in English language learn­ing with special emphasis on the Hong Kong learning environ­ment.  At the end of section 4, the scope of the study is set and we can move to the first research project which seeks to answer the questions: ‘How are errors regarded by teachers and students in secondary schools’ and ‘What are student and teach­er perceptions of difficulty in English language learning in Hong Kong?’

With some important parameters of our discussion established, it is now appropriate, by way of general introduction, to look at how English is used in Hong Kong at present. It is also important to tackle the question whether what is frequently taken as ‘difficulty’ (the odd and erroneous English commonly found in Hong Kong) may be understood merely as a separate and distinct variety of the language called ‘Hong Kong English’. If Hong Kong English is a distinct variety of English much of the discussion of categories of error etc. is obviated. On the other hand, if there is no clear cause for supposing that ‘Hong Kong English’ is a separate variety then we may pursue the causes of error and the underlying question of difficulty in English language learning in greater detail.